TURNING  TRAGEDY 


iij  n  in 

' 

MI* 


TRODUCTION    BY 

vf  D  r          HOOVER 


[BRARY 


THE  UNIVERSITY 


OF  CAL  [FORNIA 


LOS  ANGELES 


'DAfto 


WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

TURNING  TRAGEDY  TO  TRIUMPH 


BY 
CHARLOTTE  KELLOGG 


WITH  AN  INTEODUCTION  BY 
HERBERT  C.  HOOVER 

Chairman  of  The  Commission  for  Relief  in  Belgium 


THIRD  EDITION 


FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
1917 


COPYHIQHT,    1917,    BY 

FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 

[Printed  In  the  United  States  of  America] 
Published  in  April,  1917 


Copyright  Under  the  Articles  of  the  Copyright  Convention 

of  the  Pan-American  Republics  of  the 

United  States,  August  11,  1910. 


College 
Library 

D 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I.  The  Leaders i 

II.  The"Soupes" 11 

III.  The  Cradles  on  the  Meuse    ...  27 

IV.  "The  Little  Bees" 33 

V.  Mrs.  Whitlock's  Visit      ....  49 

VI.  The  Bathtub 55 

VII.  The  Bread  in  the  Hand  .      .      .      .  61 

VIII.  One  Woman 71 

IX.  The  City  of  the  Cardinal      ...  83 

X.  The  Teachers 93 

XI.  Gabrielle's  Baby 105 

XII.  The  "Drop  of  Milk" in 

XIII.  Layettes 117 

XIV.  The  Skating-Rink  at  Liege  .      .      .123 
XV.  A  Zeppelin 134 

XVI.  New  Uses  of  a  Hippodrome     .      .  137 

XVII.  The  Antwerp  Music-Hall     .      .      .149 

XVIII.  Lace 158 

iii 


1115829 


iv  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIX.  A  Toy  Factory 167 

XX.  Another  Toy  Factory     .     .      .      .174 

XXI.  The  Mutiles 179 

XXII.  The  Little  Package 186 

XXIII.  The  Green  Box 190 

XXIV.  The  "Mother  of  Belgium''   .      .      .204 
XXV.  "Out" 208 

XXVI.  Farewell 209 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

A  "LITTLE  BEES"  DINING-ROOM  FOR  SUB- 
NORMAL CHILDREN  .  .  Frontispiece 

READY  FOR  THE  CHILDREN 36 

A  "Little  Bees"  cantine  for  sub-normal  chil- 
dren. 

A  MEAL  FOR  YOUNG  MOTHERS    .     .     .     .112 

ONE  CORNER  OF  THE  BRUSSELS  HIPPODROME, 
Now  A  CENTRAL  CLOTHING  SUPPLY 
STATION 144 

THE  ANTWERP  MUSIC-HALL,  Now  A  SEW- 
ING-ROOM   152 

Here  hundreds  of  women  are  being  saved  by 
being  furnished  the  opportunity  to  work 
two  weeks  in  each  month,  on  an  average 
wage  of  sixty  cents  a  week. 

THE  SUPPLEMENTARY  MEAL  THE  RELIEF 
COMMITTEE  Is  Now  TRYING  TO  GIVE 
TO  1,250,000  SCHOOL  CHILDREN  .  .  160 

TOYS  CREATED  BY  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM.     .   176 

1,662  CHILDREN,  MADE  SUB-NORMAL  BY  THE 
WAR,  WAITING  FOR  THEIR  DINNER  .  204 


INTRODUCTION 

BY  HERBERT  HOOVER 

BELGIUM,  after  centuries  of  intermittent 
misery  and  recuperation  as  the  cockpit  of 
Europe,  had  with  a  hundred  years  of  the 
peaceful  fruition  of  the  intelligence,  cour- 
age, thrift,  and  industry  of  its  people, 
emerged  as  the  beehive  of  the  Continent. 
Its  population  of  8,000,000  upon  an  area 
of  little  less  than  Maryland  was  supported 
by  the  importation  of  raw  materials,  and 
by  their  manufacture  and  their  exchange 
over-seas  for  two-thirds  of  the  vital 
necessities  of  its  daily  life. 

When  in  the  summer  of  1914  the  peo- 
ple were  again  drawn  into  the  European 
maelstrom,  600,000  of  them  became  fugi- 
tives abroad,  and  the  remainder  were  re- 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

duced  to  the  state  of  a  city  which,  cap- 
tured by  a  hostile  army,  is  in  turn  besieged 
from  without.  Thus,  its  boundaries  were 
a  wall  of  bayonets  and  a  blockading  fleet. 

Under  modern  economic  conditions,  no 
importing  nation  carries  more  than  a  few 
weeks'  reserve  stock  of  food,  depending 
as  it  does  upon  the  daily  arrivals  of  com- 
merce; and  the  cessation  of  this  inflow, 
together  with  the  destruction  and  requisi- 
tion of  their  meager  stocks,  threatened 
the  Belgians  with  an  even  greater  catas- 
trophe— the  loss  of  their  very  life. 

With  the  stoppage  of  the  industrial 
clock,  their  workpeople  were  idle,  and  des- 
titution marched  day  and  night  into  their 
slender  savings,  until  to-day  three  and  a 
half  million  people  must  be  helped  in 
charity. 

The  Belgians  are  a  self-reliant  people 
who  had  sought  no  favors  of  the  world, 
and  their  first  instinct  and  continuing  en- 
deavor has  been  to  help  themselves.  Not 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

only  were  all  those  who  had  resources  in- 
sistent that  they  should  either  pay  now  or 
in  the  future  for  their  food,  but  far  be- 
yond this,  they  have  insisted  upon  caring 
for  their  own  destitute  to  the  fullest  ex- 
tent of  those  remaining  resources — the 
charity  of  the  poor  toward  the  poor.  They 
have  themselves  set  up  no  cry  for  benevo- 
lence, but  the  American  Relief  Commis- 
sion has  insisted  upon  pleading  to  the 
world  to  help  in  a  burden  so  far  beyond 
their  ability. 

This  Commission  was  created  in  order 
that  by  agreement  with  the  belligerents 
on  both  sides,  a  door  might  be  opened  in 
the  wall  of  steel,  through  which  those  who 
had  resources  could  re-create  the  flow  of 
supplies  to  themselves;  that  through  the 
same  channel,  the  world  might  come  to 
the  rescue  of  the  destitute,  and  beyond 
this  that  it  could  guarantee  the  guardian- 
ship of  these  supplies  to  the  sole  use  of 
the  people. 


x  INTRODUCTION 

Furthermore,  due  to  the  initial  moral, 
social  and  economic  disorganization  of  the 
country  and  the  necessary  restriction  on 
movement  and  assembly,  it  was  impossible 
for  the  Belgian  people  to  project  within 
themselves,  without  an  assisting  hand,  the 
organization  for  the  distribution  of  food 
supplies  and  the  care  of  the  impoverished. 
Therefore  the  Relief  Organization  has 
grown  to  a  great  economic  engine  that 
with  its  collateral  agencies  monopolizes 
the  import  food  supply  of  a  whole  people, 
controlling  directly  and  indirectly  the 
largest  part  of  the  native  products  so  as 
to  eliminate  all  waste  and  to  secure 
justice  in  distribution;  and,  above  all, 
it  is  charged  with  the  care  of  the  des- 
titute. 

To  visualize  truly  the  mental  and 
moral  currents  in  the  Belgian  people  dur- 
ing these  two  and  a  half  years  one  must 
have  lived  with  them  and  felt  their  misery. 
Overriding  all  physical  suffering  and  all 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

trial  is  the  great  cloud  of  mental  depres- 
sion, of  repression  and  reserve  in  every 
act  and  word,  a  terror  that  is  so  real  that 
it  was  little  wonder  to  us  when  in  the 
course  of  an  investigation  in  one  of  the 
large  cities  we  found  the  nursing  period 
of  mothers  has  been  diminished  by  one- 
fourth.  Every  street  corner  and  every 
crossroad  is  marked  by  a  bayonet,  and 
every  night  resounds  with  the  march  of 
armed  men,  the  mark  of  national  subjec- 
tion. Belgium  is  a  little  country  and  the 
sound  of  the  guns  along  a  hundred  miles 
of  front  strikes  the  senses  hourly,  and  the 
hopes  of  the  people  rise  and  fall  with  the 
rise  and  fall  in  tones  which  follow  the 
atmospheric  changes  and  the  daily  rise 
and  fall  of  battle.  Not  only  do  hope  of 
deliverance  and  anxiety  for  one's  loved 
ones  fighting  on  the  front  vibrate  with 
every  change  in  volume  of  sound,  but  with 
every  rumor  which  shivers  through  the 
population.  At  first  the  morale  of  a 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

whole  people  was  crusht:  one  saw  it  in 
every  face,  deadened  and  drawn  by 
the  whole  gamut  of  emotions  that  had 
exhausted  their  souls,  but  slowly,  and 
largely  by  the  growth  of  the  Relief  Or- 
ganization and  the  demand  that  it  has 
made  upon  their  exertion  and  their  devo- 
tion, this  morale  has  recovered  to  a  fine 
flowering  of  national  spirit  and  stoical 
resolution.  The  Relief  Commission  stands 
as  an  encouragement  and  protection  to  the 
endeavors  of  the  Belgian  people  them- 
selves and  a  shield  to  their  despair.  By 
degrees  an  army  of  55,000  volunteer 
workers  on  Relief  had  grown  up  among 
the  Belgian  and  French  people,  of  a  per- 
fection and  a  patriotism  without  parallel 
in  the  existence  of  any  country. 

To  find  the  finance  of  a  nation's  relief 
requiring  eighteen  million  dollars  monthly 
from  economic  cycles  of  exchange,  from 
subsidies  of  different  governments,  from 
the  world's  public  charity;  to  purchase 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

300,000,000  pounds  of  concentrated  food- 
stuffs per  month  of  a  character  appro- 
priate to  individual  and  class;  to  secure 
and  operate  a  fleet  of  seventy  cargo  ships, 
to  arrange  their  regular  passages  through 
blockades  and  war  zones;  to  manage  the 
reshipment  by  canal  and  rail  and  distribu- 
tion to  140  terminals  throughout  Belgium 
and  Northern  France ;  to  control  the  mill- 
ing of  wheat  and  the  making  of  bread ;  to 
distribute  with  rigid  efficiency  and  justice 
not  only  bread  but  milk,  soup,  potatoes, 
fats,  rice,  beans,  corn,  soap  and  other 
commodities;  to  create  the  machinery  of 
public  feeding  in  cantines  and  soup- 
kitchens;  to  supply  great  clothing  estab- 
lishments; to  give  the  necessary  assur- 
ances that  the  occupying  army  receives  no 
benefit  from  the  food  supply;  to  maintain 
checks  and  balances  assuring  efficiency 
and  integrity — all  these  things  are  a 
man's  job.  To  this  service  the  men  of 
Belgium  and  Northern  France  have  given 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

the  most  stedfast  courage  and  high  in- 
telligence. 

Beyond  all  this,  however,  is  the  equally 
great  and  equally  important  problem — 
the  discrimination  of  the  destitute  from 
those  who  can  pay,  the  determination  of 
their  individual  needs — a  service  efficient, 
just  and  tender  in  its  care  of  the 
helpless. 

To  create  a  network  of  hundreds  of 
cantines  for  expectant  mothers,  growing 
babies,  for  orphans  and  debilitated  chil- 
dren; to  provide  the  machinery  for  sup- 
plemental meals  for  the  adolescent  in  the 
schools;  to  organize  workrooms  and  to 
provide  stations  for  the  distribution  of 
clothing  to  the  poor;  to  see  that  all  these 
reliefs  cover  the  field,  so  that  none  fall  by 
the  wayside;  to  investigate  and  counsel 
each  and  every  case  that  no  waste  or 
failure  result;  to  search  out  and  provide 
appropriate  assistance  to  those  who  would 
rather  die  than  confess  poverty;  to  direct 


INTRODUCTION  rv 

these  stations,  not  from  committee  meet- 
ings after  afternoon  tea,  but  by  actual 
executive  labor  from  early  morning  till 
late  at  night — to  go  far  beyond  mere  di- 
rection by  giving  themselves  to  the  actual 
manual  labor  of  serving  the  lowly  and 
helpless ;  to  do  it  with  cheerfulness,  sympa- 
thy and  tenderness,  not  to  hundreds 
but  literally  to  millions,  this  is  woman's 
work. 

This  service  has  been  given,  not  by 
tens,  but  by  thousands,  and  it  is  a 
service  that  in  turn  has  summoned  a  de- 
votion, kindliness  and  tenderness  in  the 
Belgian  and  French  women  that  has 
welded  all  classes  with  a  spiritual  bond 
unknown  in  any  people  before.  It  has 
implanted  in  the  national  heart  and  the 
national  character  a  quality  which  is  in 
some  measure  a  compensation  for  the 
calamities  through  which  these  people  are 
passing.  The  soul  of  Belgium  received  a 
grievous  wound,  but  the  women  of  Bel- 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

gium  are  staunching  the  flow — sustain- 
ing and  leading  this  stricken  nation  to 
greater  strength  and  greater  life. 

We  of  the  Relief  have  been  proud  of 
the  privilege  to  place  the  tools  in  the 
hands  of  these  women,  and  have  watched 
their  skilful  use  and  their  improvement  in 
method  with  hourly  admiration.  We 
have  believed  it  to  be  so  great  an  inspira- 
tion that  we  have  daily  wished  it  could  be 
pictured  by  a  sympathizing  hand,  and  we 
confess  to  insisting  that  Mrs.  Kellogg 
should  spend  some  months  with  her  hus- 
band during  his  administration  of  our 
Brussels  office.  She  has  done  more  than 
record  in  simple  terms  passing  impres- 
sions of  the  varied  facts  of  the  great 
work  of  these  women,  for  she  spent 
months  in  loving  sympathy  with  them. 

We  offer  her  little  book  as  our,  and 
Mrs.  Kellogg's,  tribute  in  admiration  of 
them  and  the  inspiration  which  they  have 
contributed  to  this  whole  organization. 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

This  devotion  and  this  service  have  now 
gone  on  for  nearly  goo  long  days.  Under 
unceasing  difficulties  the  tools  have  been 
kept  in  the  hands  of  these  women,  and 
they  have  accomplished  their  task.  All  of 
this  time  there  have  stood  behind  them 
our  warehouses  with  from  thirty  to  sixty 
days'  supplies  in  advance,  and  tragedy 
has  thus  been  that  distance  remote.  Our 
share  and  the  share  of  these  women  has 
therefore  been  a  task  of  prevention,  not  a 
task  of  remedy.  Our  task  and  theirs  has 
been  to  maintain  the  laughter  of  the  chil- 
dren, not  to  dry  their  tears.  The  pathos 
of  the  long  lines  of  expectant,  chattering 
mites,  each  with  a  ticket  of  authority 
pinned  to  its  chest  or  held  in  a  grimy  fist, 
never  depresses  the  mind  of  childhood. 
Nor  does  fear  ever  enter  their  little  heads 
lest  the  slender  chain  of  finance,  ships 
and  direction  which  supports  these  ware- 
houses should  fail,  for  has  the  can- 
tine  ever  failed  in  all  these  two  and  a 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

half  years?  That  the  day  shall  not  come 
when  some  Belgian  woman  amid  her  tears 
must  stand  before  its  gate  to  repeat: 
"Mes  petites,  it  n'y  en  a  plus,"  is  simply 
a  problem  of  labor  and  money.  In  this 
America  has  a  duty,  and  the  women  of 
America  a  privilege. 

HERBERT  HOOVER. 


WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

TURNING  TRAGEDY  TO  TRIUMPH 


THE  LEADERS 

THE  story  of  Belgium  will  never  be 
told.    That  is  the  word  that  passes 
oftenest  between  us.    No  one  will 
ever  by  word  of  mouth  or  in  writing  give 
it  to  others  in  its  entirety,  or  even  tell 
what  he  himself  has  seen  and  felt.     The 
longer  he  stays  the  more  he  realizes  the 
futility  of  any  such  attempt,  the  more  he 
becomes  dumb.     It  requires  a  brush  and 
color  beyond  our  grasp;  it  must  be  the 
picture  of  the  soul  of  a  nation  in  travail, 
of  the  lifting  of  the  strong  to  save  the 
weak.    We  may,  however,  choose  certain 
angles    of   vision    from   which    we    see, 
i 


2  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

thrown  into  high  relief,  special  aspects  ofi 
an  inexpressible  experience. 

One  of  these  particular  developments  is 
the  unswerving  devotion  of  the  women  of 
Belgium  to  all  those  hurt  or  broken  by 
the  tragedy  within  and  without  her  gates. 
How  fortunate  are  these  women,  born  to 
royal  leadership,  to  have  found  in  their 
Queen  the  leader  typifying  the  highest 
ideal  of  their  service,  and  the  actual  com- 
rade in  sorrow,  working  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  them  in  the  hospitals  and 
kitchens.  The  battle-lines  may  separate 
her  wounded  and  suffering  from  theirs, 
but  they  know  always  that  she  is  there, 
doing  as  they  are  doing,  and  more  than 
they  are  doing. 

Never  were  sovereigns  more  loved, 
more  adored  than  Albert  and  Elizabeth. 
All  through  these  two  years  people  have 
been  borne  up  by  the  vision  of  the  day  of 
their  return.  "But  how  shall  we  be  able 
to  stand  it  ?"  they  say.  "We  shall  go  mad 


THE  LEADERS  3 

with  joy!"  "We  shall  not  be  able  to 
speak  for  weeping  and  shouting!"  "We 
shall  march  from  the  four  corners  of  the 
country  on  foot  in  a  mighty  pilgrimage  to 
Brussels,  the  King  shall  know  what  we 
think  of  him  as  man  and  leader !" 

When  they  speak  of  the  Queen  all 
words  are  inadequate ;  they  place  her  first 
as  woman,  as  mother,  as  tender  nurse. 
They  are  proud,  and  with  reason,  of  her 
intelligence  and  sound  judgment.  Under 
her  father,  a  distinguished  oculist,  she 
received  a  most  rigorous  education;  she 
is  equipped  in  brain  as  well  as  in  heart 
for  her  incalculable  responsibilities.  I  was 
told  the  other  day  that  she  dislikes  ex- 
ceedingly having  her  photograph  as 
"nurse"  circulate,  feeling  that  people  may 
think  she  wishes  to  be  known  for  her  good 
works.  But  whether  she  wishes  it  or  not, 
she  is  known  and  will  be  known  through- 
out history  for  her  good  works — for  her 
clear,  clean  vision  of  right,  her  swift 


4  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

courage,  and  her  utter  devotion  to  each 
and  all  of  her  people.  Albert  and  Eliza- 
beth, A  and  E,  these  letters  are  written 
on  the  heart  of  Belgium. 

If  in  the  United  States  we  have  been 
too  far  away  to  realize  in  detail  what  the 
work  of  the  Queen  has  been,  we  have  had 
on  our  own  shores  the  unforgettable  ex- 
ample of  her  dear  friend,  Marie  de  Page, 
to  prove  to  us  the  heroism  of  the  women 
of  Belgium. 

Before  she  came,  we  knew  of  her.  After 
the  first  two  months  of  the  war  she  had 
left  her  mother  and  father  and  youngest 
boy  in  Brussels — realizing  that  she  was 
cutting  herself  off  from  all  news  of  them — 
to  follow  her  husband,  who  had  himself 
followed  his  King  to  Le  Havre.  She 
worked  her  way  across  the  frontier  to 
Flushing,  and  finally  to  La  Panne.  The 
whole  career  of  Doctor  de  Page  had  been 
founded  on  her  devoted  cooperation,  and 
one  has  imagined  the  joy  of  that  reunion 


THE  LEADERS  5 

in  the  great  base  hospital  at  La  Panne/ 
where  he  was  in  charge.    Her  eldest  son 
was  already  in  the  trenches,  the  second, 
seventeen  years  old,  was  waiting  his  turn. 

She  worked  as  a  nurse  at  her  husband's 
side,  day  and  night,  until  she  could  no 
longer  bear  to  see  the  increasing  needs  of 
the  wounded  without  being  able  to  relieve 
them,  and  she  determined  to  seek  aid  in 
America.  This  journey,  even  in  peace 
time,  is  a  much  more  formidable  under- 
taking for  an  European  than  for  an 
American  woman,  but  Marie  de  Page 
started  alone,  encouraged  always  by  her 
good  friend,  the  Queen.  And  how  swiftly, 
how  enduringly,  she  won  our  hearts,  as 
from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  she  told 
so  simply  and  poignantly  her  country's 
story ! 

She  was  a  Belgian  woman;  so,  even  in 
her  great  trouble,  she  could  not  neglect 
her  personal  appearance,  and  after  the 
fatiguing  [journey  across  the  Continent, 


6  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

she  looked  fresh  and  charming  as  we  met 
her  in  San  Francisco.  The  first  day  at 
luncheon  we  were  plying  her  with  ques- 
tions, until  finally  she  laughed  and  said, 
"If  you  don't  mind,  I  had  better  spread 
the  map  on  the  table — then  you  will  see 
more  quickly  all  the  answers!"  We 
moved  our  plates  while  she  took  the  pre- 
cious plan  from  her  bag,  and  smoothed 
it  across  her  end  of  the  table.  Then  with 
her  pencil  she  marked  off  with  a  heavy 
line  the  little  part  that  is  still  free  Bel- 
gium: she  drew  a  star  in  front  of  La 
Panne  Hospital  and  we  were  orientated! 
From  point  to  point  her  pencil  traveled 
as  we  put  our  eager  questions.  We  mar- 
yeled  at  the  directness  with  which  she 
brought  her  country  and  her  people  be- 
fore us.  We  knew  that  her  own  son  was 
in  the  trenches,  but  she  made  it  impossible 
for  us  to  think  of  herself. 

Then,  tho  there  was  much  more  to  be 
done  in  America,  she  left.     She  must  re- 


THE  LEADERS  7 

turn  to  La  Panne;  her  husband  needed 
her.  She  had  just  received  word  that  her 
seventeen-year-old  son  was  to  join  his 
brother  in  the  trenches;  she  hurried  to 
New  York.  She  did  not  wish  to  book 
on  a  non-neutral  line,  but  further  word 
showed  her  that  her  only  chance  to  see 
her  boy  lay  in  taking  the  fastest  possible 
ship.  Fortunately  the  biggest,  safest  one 
was  just  about  to  leave,  so  she  carried  on 
board  the  money  and  supplies  she  was 
taking  back  to  her  people. 

We  settled  down  to  doing  what  we 
could  to  carry  forward  her  work.  Then, 
on  May  7,  1915,  flashed  the  incredible, 
the  terrible  news — the  greatest  passenger 
liner  afloat  had  been  torpedoed!  The 
Lusitania  had  sunk  in  twenty-two  min- 
utes, 1,198  lives  had  been  lost.  We  went 
about  dazed. 

One  by  one  the  recovered  bodies  were 
identified,  and  among  them  was  that  of 
Marie  de  Page. 


8  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

We  have  found  some  little  consolation 
in  endowing  beds  in  her  memory  in  the 
hospital  for  which  she  gave  her  life.  She 
is  buried  in  the  sand  dunes  not  far  from 
it;  whenever  Doctor  de  Page  looks  from 
his  window,  he  looks  on  her  grave. 

"IN" 

As  the  only  American  woman  member 
of  the  Commission  for  Relief  I  was  per- 
mitted to  enter  Belgium  in  July,  1916. 

I  already  knew  that  this  country  held 
3,000,000  destitute ;  that  over  one  and  one- 
quarter  million  depended  for  existence  en- 
tirely on  the  daily  "soupes" ;  that  between 
the  soup-lines  and  the  rich  (who  in  every 
country,  in  every  catastrophe,  can  most 
easily  save  themselves)  there  were  those 
who,  after  having  all  their  lives  earned  a 
comfortable  living,  now  found  their 
sources  of  income  vanished,  and  literally 
faced  starvation.  For  this  large  body, 
drawn  from  the  industrial,  commercial 


THE  LEADERS  9 

and  professional  classes,  from  the  nobil- 
ity itself,  the  suffering  was  most  acute, 
most  difficult  to  discover  and  relieve. 

I  knew  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war  the  great  organizing  genius  of  Her- 
bert Hoover  had  seized  the  apparently 
unsolvable  problem  of  the  Relief  of  Bel- 
gium, and  with  an  incredible  swiftness 
had  forced  the  cooperation  of  the  world 
in  the  saving  of  this  people  who  had  not 
counted  the  cost  of  defending  their  honor. 
That  because  of  this,  every  day  in  the 
month,  ships,  desperately  difficult  to  se- 
cure, were  pushing  across  the  oceans  with 
their  cargoes  of  wheat  and  rice  and  bacon, 
to  be  rushed  from  Rotterdam  through  the 
canals  to  the  C.  R.  B.  warehouses  through- 
out Belgium.  It  meant  the  finding  of 
millions  of  money — $250,000,000  to  date 
— begging  of  individuals,  praying  to  gov- 
ernments, the  pressing  of  all  the  world  to 
service. 

I  realized,  too,  that  the  Belgian  men, 


10  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

under  the  active  leadership  of  Messieurs 
Solvay,  Francqui,  de  '  Wouters  and 
Janssen,  with  a  joint  administration  of 
Americans  and  Belgians,  were  organized 
into  the  Comite  National,  whose  activities 
covered  every  square  foot  of  the  country, 
determining  the  exact  situation,  the  exact 
need  of  each  section,  and  who  were  re- 
sponsible for  the  meeting  of  the  situation 
locally  and  as  a  whole. 

But  I  knew  from  the  lips  of  the  Chair- 
man of  the  C.  R.  B.  himself,  that  despite 
all  the  work  of  the  splendid  men  of  these 
organizations,  the  martyrdom  of  Belgium 
was  being  prevented  by  its  women.  I 
was  to  learn  in  what  glorious  manner,  in 
what  hitherto  undreamed  of  degree,  this 
was  true — that  the  women  of  Belgium, 
true  to  the  womanhood  and  motherhood 
of  all  ages,  were  binding  the  wounds  and 
healing  the  soul  of  their  country! 


II 

THE   "SOUPES" 

1  SHALL    never    think    of    Belgium 
without  seeing  endless  processions  of 
silent  men  and  black-shawled  women, 
pitchers  in  hand,  waiting,  waiting  for  the 
day's  pint  of  soup.    One  and  one-quarter 
million  make  a  long  procession.     If  you 
have  imagined  it  in  the  sunshine,  think 
of  it  in  the  rain! 

One  may  shut  himself  up  in  his  house 
and  forget  the  war  for  a  few  hours,  but 
he  dare  not  venture  outside.  If  he  does 
he  will  quickly  stumble  against  a  part  of 
this  line,  or  on  hundreds  of  little  chil- 
dren guarding  their  precious  cards  as 
they  wait  to  be  passed  in  to  one  of  the 
"Enfants  Debiles"  dining-rooms,  or  on  a 
very  long  line  of  women  in  front  of  a 
11 


12 

communal  store  where  "identity  cards" 
permit  the  purchase  every  week  of  limited 
rations  of  American  bacon  or  rice  and  a 
few  other  foods  at  fixt  prices  (prices  set 
by  American  efficiency  below  those  of 
America  itself) ;  or,  on  a  group  of  black- 
shawled  mothers  waiting  for  the  dinner 
that  enables  them  to  nurse  the  babies  in 
their  arms. 

The  destitute  must  have  a  "supple- 
ment" to  their  daily  ration  of  carbo- 
hydrates and  fat  which  will  give  them 
protein — says  the  C.  R.  B.,  and  thus  we 
have  "Soupes"; — but  these  dry  state- 
ments of  engineers  now  become  dieticians 
convey  to  no  one  the  human  story;  of 
these  dumb,  waiting  lines. 

We  can  have  little  conception  of  what 
it  means  for  just  one  city,  the  Agglomera- 
tion of  Brussels,  for  instance,  to  keep 
200,000  out  of  its  1,000,000  people  on 
the  "Soupes,"  not  for  a  month  or  two, 
but  for  over  two  years!  Nor  does  this 


THE  "SOUPES"  13 

include  the  soup  made  by  the  "Little 
Bees,"  an  organization  which  cares  espe- 
cially for  children,  for  the  thousands  in 
their  cantines;  or  the  soup  served  to  the 
8,500  children  in  sixty  communal  schools 
of  central  Brussels  at  four  o'clock  each 
afternoon,  which  is  prepared  in  a  special 
kitchen.  These  quantities  are  all  over  and 
above  the  regular  soup  served  to  200,000 
— and  do  not  think  of  soup  as  an  Ameri- 
can knows  it,  think  more  of  a  kind  of 
stew;  for  it  is  thick,  and,  in  the  words  of 
the  C  R.  B.,  "full  of  calories." 

To  make  it  for  central  Brussels  the 
slaughter-house  has  been  converted  into 
a  mighty  kitchen,  in  charge  of  a  famous 
pre-war  maitre  d'hotel.  Ninety-five  cooks 
and  assistants  from  the  best  restaurants 
of  the  capital  have  been  transferred  from 
the  making  of  pates  and  souffles  to  the 
daily  preparation  of  25,000  quarts  of 
soup!  And  they  use  the  ingenuity  born 
of  long  experience,  to  secure  an  appetiz- 


14  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

ing  variety  while  strictly  following  the 
orders  of  directing  physicians.  They  had 
been  doing  this  over  700  days  when  I 
visited  the  kitchen,  but  there  was  still  a 
fresh  eagerness  to  produce  something 
savory  and  different.  And  one  must  re- 
member that  the  changes  can  come  only 
from  shifting  the  emphasis  from  our  dried 
American  peas  to  beans,  from  carrots  to 
cabbages,  from  macaroni  to  rice.  The 
quantity  of  meat  remains  about  the  same, 
1,200  pounds  a  day,  which,  tho  the  com- 
mittee kills  its  own  cattle,  costs  almost 
fifty  cents  a  pound.  There  must  be,  too, 
10,000  pounds  of  potatoes.  The  great 
fear  has  been  that  this  quantity  might  be. 
cut,  and  unfortunately,  in  November, 
1916,  that  fear  was  realized  to  the  extent 
of  a  2,000  pound  drop — and  then  remedied 
by  the  C.  R.  B.  with  more  beans,  more 
rice,  more  peas! 

Personal  inspection  of  this  marvelous 
kitchen  is  the  only  thing  that  could  give 


THE  "SOUPES"  15 

an  idea  of  its  extraordinary  cleanliness. 
The  building  offers  great  space,  plenty  of 
air  and  light  and  unlimited  supply  of 
water.  The  potato  rooms,  where  each 
potato  is  put  through  two  peeling  pro- 
cesses, are  in  one  quarter.  Near  them 
are  the  green  vegetable  rooms  with  their 
stone  troughs,  where  everything  is  washed 
four  or  five  times.  The  problem  of  pur- 
chasing the  vegetables  is  so  great  that  a 
special  committee  has  been  formed  at 
Malines  to  buy  for  Brussels  on  the  spot. 
One  of  the  saving  things  for  Belgium  has 
been  that  she  produces  quantities  of  these 
delicious  greens.  In  the  smaller  towns  a 
committeeman  usually  goes  each  morning 
to  market  the  day's  supply.  For  instance, 
the  lawyer  who  occupies  himself  with  the 
vegetables  for  the  Charleroi  soup,  makes 
his  own  selection  at  four  o'clock  each 
morning,  and  is  extravagantly  proud  of 
the  quality  of  his  carrots  and  lettuces! 
The  most  important  section,  naturally, 


16  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

is  that  which  cares  for  the  meat  and  un- 
smoked  bacon  or  "lard"  the  C.  R.  B. 
brings  in.  The  more  fat  in  the  soup,  the 
happier  the  recipient !  With  the  little  meat 
that  can  still  be  had  in  the  butcher  shop, 
selling  at  over  one  dollar  a  pound,  one  can 
imagine  what  it  means  to  find  a  few  pieces 
in  the  pint  of  soup!  Then  there  is  the 
great  kitchen  proper,  with  the  one  hun- 
dred and  forty  gas-heated  caldrons,  and 
the  dozens  of  cooks  hurrying  from  one 
to  another.  There  seem  to  be  running 
rivers  of  water  everywhere,  a  perpetual 
washing  of  food  and  receptacles  and 
premises. 

The  first  shift  of  cooks  arrives  at  two- 
thirty  in  the  morning  to  start  the  gas 
under  the  one  hundred  and  forty  great 
kettles,  for  an  early  truck-load  of  cans 
must  be  off  at  8  o'clock.  That  shift  leaves 
at  noon;  the  second  works  from  8  till  5, 
on  an  average  wage  of  four  francs  a  day 
and  soupe! 


THE  "SOUPES"  17 

There  are  ten  of  the  large  trucks  and 
500  of  the  fifty-quart  cans  in  constant 
use.  As  soon  as  the  8  o'clock  lot  come 
back,  they  are  quickly  cleaned,  refilled, 
and  hurried  off  on  their  second  journey. 
Mostly  they  are  hurried  off  through  rain, 
for  there  are  many  more  rainy  than  sunny 
days  in  Belgium. 

One  passes  a  long  line  of  patient,  wet, 
miserable-looking  men  and  women  with 
their  empty  pitchers,  then  meets  with  a 
thrill  the  red  truck  bringing  the  steam- 
ing cans.  The  bakers  have  probably 
already  delivered  the  25,000  loaves  of 
bread,  for  a  half  loaf  goes  with  each 
pint  of  soup. 

By  following  one  of  these  steaming 
trucks  I  discovered  "Soupe  18,"  with  its 
line  of  silent  hundreds  stretching  along 
the  wet  street. 

I  was  half  an  hour  early,  so  there  was 
time  to  talk  with  the  local  committee  man- 
agers who  were  preparing  the  big  hall  for 


18  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

the  women  who  would  arrive  in  a  few 
minutes  to  fill  the  pitchers  with  soup,  and 
the  string  bags  with  bread.  These  com- 
munal soupes  are  generally  directed  by 
men,  tho  women  do  the  actual  serving. 
The  enthusiastic  secretary,  who  had  been 
a  tailor  before  the  war,  said  regretfully 
that  he  had  been  obliged  to  be  absent 
three  days  in  the  two  years. 

At  the  left,  near  the  entrance,  I  was 
shown  the  office  with  all  the  records,  and 
with  the  shelves  of  precious  pots  of  jam 
and  tiny  packages  of  coffee  and  rice 
which  are  given  out  two  or  three  times  a 
month — in  an  attempt  to  make  a  little 
break  in  the  monotony  of  the  continual 
soup.  No  one  can  picture  the  heart- 
breaking eagerness  in  the  faces  of  these 
thousands  as  they  line  up  for  this  special 
distribution — these  meager  spoonfuls  of 
jam,  or  handfuls  of  chopped  meat. 

We  reviewed  the  army  of  cans  sta- 
tioned toward  the  rear,  and  the  great 


THE  "SOUPES"  19 

bread-racks  of  either  side.  The  commit- 
tee of  women  arrived;  we  tasted  the  soup 
and  found  it  good.  I  was  asked  to  sit  at 
the  table  with  two  men  directors,  where 
I  might  watch  them  stamp  and  approve 
the  ration-cards  as  the  hungry  passed  in. 

One  may  hate  war,  but  never  as  it 
should  be  hated  until  he  has  visited  the 
communal  soupes  and  the  homes  repre- 
sented by  the  lines.  The  work  must  be 
so  carefully  systematized  that  there  is 
only  time  for  a  word  or  two  as  they  pass 
the  table.  But  that  word  is  enough  to  re- 
veal the  tragedy!  There  are  sometimes 
the  undeserving,  but  it  is  not  often  that 
any  of  the  thousands  who  file  by  are  not 
in  pitiful  straits.  That  morning  the  sad- 
dest were  the  very  old — for  them  the 
men  had  always  a  kindly  "How  is  it, 
mother?  How  goes  it,  father?" 

The  "Merci,  Monsieur,  merci  beau- 
coup,"  of  one  sweet-faced  old  woman  was 
so  evidently  the  expression  of  genuine 


20  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

feeling,  that  I  asked  about  her.  She  had 
three  sons,  who  had  supported  her  well — 
all  three  were  in  the  trenches.  Another 
still  older,  said,  "Thank  you  very  much," 
in  familiar  English.  She,  too,  had  been 
caught  in  the  net,  and  there  was  no  work. 
A  little  Spanish  woman  had  lost  her  hus- 
band soon  after  the  war  began,  and  the 
director  who  investigated  the  case  was 
convinced  that  he  had  died  of  hunger. 
An  old  French  soldier  on  a  crutch,  but 
not  too  feeble  to  bow  low  as  he  said 
"Merci,"  was  an  unforgettable  figure. 

Some  of  the  very  old  and  very  weak 
are  given  supplementary  tickets  which 
entitle  them  to  small  portions  of  white 
bread,  more  adapted  to  their  needs  than 
the  stern  war  bread  of  the  C.  R.  B. ; 
and  every  two  days  mothers  are  allowed 
additional  bread  for  their  children.  One 
curly-haired  little  girl  was  following  her 
mother  and  grandmother,  and  slipt  out 
of  the  line  to  offer  a  tiny  hand.  Then 


THE  "SOUPES"  21 

came  a  tall,  distinguished-looking  man, 
about  whom  the  directors  knew  little — 
except  that  he  was  absolutely  without 
funds.  They  put  kindly  questions  to  the 
poor  hunchback,  who  had  just  returned  to 
the  line  from  the  hospital,  and  congrat- 
ulated the  pretty  girl  of  fifteen,  who  had 
won  all  the  term's  prizes  in  the  com- 
munal school.  There  were  those  who 
had  never  succeeded;  then  there  were 
those  who  two  years  before  had  been 
comfortable — railway  employees,  artists, 
men  and  women,  young  and  old,  in  end- 
less procession,  a  large  proportion  in 
carpet  slippers,  or  other  substitutes  for 
leather  shoes.  Many  were  weak  and  ill- 
looking;  all  wore  the  stamp  of  war. 
Every  day  they  must  come  for  the  pint 
of  soup  and  the  bread  that  meant  life — 
200,000  in  Brussels  alone;  in  Belgium 
one  and  a  half  million!  These  are  the 
lowest  in  the  scale  of  misery — those  who 
"must  have  a  supplement  of  protein/'  for 


22  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

meat  never  passes  their  lips  but  in  soup. 

The  questions  were  always  swift,  ad- 
mitting no  delay  in  the  reply,  and  know- 
ing the  hearts  of  the  questioners,  I  won- 
dered a  little  at  this.  Till  in  a  flash  I 
saw:  if  the  directors  wished  to  know 
more  they  would  go  to  the  homes  repre- 
sented— but  the  line  must  not  be  held 
back!  Every  ten  minutes'  halt  means 
that  those  outside  in  the  rain  must  stand 
ten  minutes  longer.  On  this  particular 
day  the  committee  put  through  a  line  rep- 
resenting 2,500  pints  of  soup  and  por- 
tions of  bread  in  fifty  minutes,  an  almost 
incredible  efficiency,  especially  when  you 
remember  that  every  card  is  examined 
and  stamped  as  well  as  every  pitiful 
pitcher  and  string  bag  filled. 

That  day  a  woman  who  had  not  be- 
fore served  on  the  soupes  offered  her 
services  to  the  seasoned  workers.  They 
were  grateful,  but  smilingly  advised  her 
to  go  home,  fill  her  bath  tub  with  water, 


THE  "SOUPES"  23 

and  ladle  it  out — to  repeat  this  the  fol- 
lowing day  and  the  following,  until  finally 
she  might  return,  ready  to  endure  the 
work,  and  above  all,  not  to  retard  the 
"Line"  five  unnecessary  minutes!  Two 
and  a  half  years  have  not  dulled  the  ten- 
derness of  these  women  toward  the 
wretched  ones  they  serve. 

AT  HOME 

Belgium  is  small.  Until  now  I  had 
been  able  to  go  and  return  in  the  same 
day.  But  on  this  particular  evening  I 
found  myself  too  far  south  to  get  back. 
I  was  in  a  thickly  forested,  sparsely  settled 
district,  but  I  knew  that  farther  on  there 
was  a  great  chateau  belonging  to  the 
family  of  A.,  with  numerous  spare  rooms. 

Tho  I  had  been  in  Belgium  only  a 
short  time  I  had  already  learned  how  un- 
measured is  the  friendship  offered  us,  but 
I  also  knew  that  Belgian  etiquette  and 


24  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

convention  were  extremely  rigorous,  and 
I  hesitated. 

It  was  thoroughly  dark,  when,  after 
crossing  a  final  stretch  of  beechwood,  I 
rang  the  bell  and  sent  in  my  card,  with 
a  brief  line. 

After  what  seemed  an  endless  time  I 
saw  the  servant  coming  back  through  the 
great  hall,  followed  by  three  women,  who, 
I  felt  instinctively,  had  not  come  in  wel- 
come. 

But  there  was  no  turning  about  possible 
now — some  one  was  already  speaking  to 
me.  Her  very  first  words  showed  she 
could  not  in  the  least  have  understood. 
And  I  swiftly  realized  this  was  not  sur- 
prizing since  I  had  been  there  so  short  a 
time,  and  there  had  not  before  been  a 
woman  delegate.  I  explained  that  my 
sole  excuse  for  sending  in  my  stranger's 
card  at  that  time  of  night  was  my  mem- 
bership in  the  C.  R.  B. — and  I  uncovered 
my  pin. 


THE  "SOUPES"  25 

It  was  as  if  I  had  revealed  a  magic 
symbol — the  door  swung  wide!  They 
took  my  hands  and  drew  me  inside,  over- 
whelming me  with  apologies,  with  en- 
treaties to  stop  with  them,  to  stay  for  a 
week,  or  longer.  They  would  send  for 
my  husband — as  Director  he  must  be 
sorely  in  need  of  a  few  days'  rest — we 
should  both  rest.  Their  district  in  the 
forest  had  many  relief  centers,  they  would 
see  that  I  got  to  them  all.  A  room  was 
all  ready  for  me  on  the  floor  above — if  I 
did  not  like  it  I  should  have  another.  I 
must  have  some  hot  tilleul  at  once! 

In  the  drawing-room  I  was  presented 
to  the  other  thirteen  or  fourteen  mem- 
bers of  the  family,  and  in  pages  I  could 
not  recount  their  beautiful  efforts,  indi- 
vidually and  together,  to  make  me  forget 
I  had  had  to  wait  for  one  moment  on 
their  threshold. 

Still  later,  two  American  men  arrived. 
They  were  known,  and  expected  at  any 


26  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

hour  of  the  day  or  night  their  duties 
might  bring  them  that  way.  One  of  them 
was  ill,  and  not  his  own  mother  and  sister 
could  have  been  more  solicitous  in  their 
care  of  him  than  were  these  kind  women. 
Do  Americans  wonder  that  it  hurts  us, 
when  we  return,  to  have  people  praise 
us  for  what  we  Have  given  Belgium?  In 
our  hearts  we  are  remembering  what 
Belgium  has  given  us. 


Ill 

THE  CRADLES  ON  THE  MEUSE 

DINANT  made  me  think  of  Pompeii. 
It  had  been  one  of  the  pleasure- 
spots  of  Belgium;  gay,  smiling,  it 
stretched  along  the  tranquil  Meuse,  at 
the  base  of  granite  bluffs  and  beech- 
covered  hill-slopes.  There  were  fac- 
tories, it  is  true,  at  either  end  of  the 
town;  but  they  had  not  marred  it.  Every 
year  thousands  of  visitors,  chiefly  Eng- 
lish and  Germans,  had  stopt  there  to  for- 
get life's  grimness.  Dinant  could  make 
one  forget:  she  was  joyous,  lovable, 
laughing.  Before  the  tragedy  of  her 
ruins,  one  felt  exactly  as  if  a  happy  child 
had  been  crusht  or  mutilated. 

I  came  to  Dinant  in  September,  1916, 

27 


28  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

by  the  way  of  one  of  the  two  cemeteries 
where  her  600,  shot  in  August,  1914, 
are  buried.  This  burial-ground  is  on  a 
sunny  hill-slope  overlooking  rolling  wheat 
fields,  and  the  martyred  lie  in  long  rows 
at  the  upper  corner.  A  few  have  been 
interred  in  their  family  plots,  but  mostly 
they  are  gathered  in  this  separate  place. 

Up  and  down  I  followed  the  narrow 
paths;  the  crowded  plain  white  crosses 
with  their  laconic  inscriptions  spoke  as 
no  historian  ever  will.  "Father,  Hus- 
band, and  Son";  "Brother  and  Nephew"; 
"Husband  and  Sons,  one  seventeen,  and 
another  nineteen" ;  "Brother  and  Father" ; 
"Husband  and  Brother";  "Brother,  Sons 
and  Father";  "Father  and  Son"— the 
dirge  of  the  desolation  of  wives  and 
sisters  and  mothers!  War  that  had  left 
them  the  flame-scarred  skeletons  of  their 
homes,  had  left  them  the  corpses  of  their 
loved  ones  as  well! 

Dinant  was  not  entirely  destroyed,  but 


THE  CRADLES  ON  THE  MEUSE     29 

a  great  part  of  it  was.  A  few  days  after 
the  burning,  people  began  to  crawl  back. 
They  came  from  hiding-places  in  the 
hills,  from  near-by  villages,  from  up  and 
down  the  river,  to  take  up  life  where  they 
had  left  it.  Human  beings  are  most 
extraordinarily  adaptable:  people  were 
asked  where  they  were  living;  no  one 
could  answer  exactly,  but  all  knew  that 
they  were  living  somewhere,  somehow — 
in  the  sheltered  corner  of  a  ruined  room, 
perhaps  in  a  cave,  or  beside  a  chimney! 
The  relief  committee  hurried  in  food  and 
clothing,  hastily  constructed  a  few  tem- 
porary cottages;  a  few  persons  began  to 
rebuild  their  original  homes,  and  life 
went  on. 

I  was  walking  through  a  particularly 
devastated  section,  nothing  but  skeleton 
fagades  and  ragged  walls  in  sight,  when 
suddenly  from  the  midst  of  the  devasta- 
tion I  heard  the  merry  laughter  of  chil- 
dren. I  pushed  ahead  to  look  around  the 


30  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

other  side  of  a  wall,  and  there  was  a  most 
incredible  picture.  In  front  of  a  low  tem- 
porary building  tucked  in  among  the  ruins, 
was  a  series  of  railed-in  pens  for  children 
to  play  in.  And  there  they  were  romping 
riotously — fifty-two  golden-haired,  lovely 
babies,  all  under  four!  Along  the  front 
of  the  enclosure  was  a  series  of  tall  poles 
carrying  gaily  painted  cocks  and  cats  and 
lions.  That  is  the  Belgian  touch;  no  re- 
lief center  is  too  discouraging  to  be  at 
once  transformed  into  something  cheer- 
ing, even  beautiful.  The  babies  had  on 
bright  pink-and-white  checked  aprons.  I 
let  myself  in,  and  they  dashed  for  me, 
pulling  my  coat,  hiding  in  the  folds  of  my 
skirt,  deciding  at  once  that  I  was  a  good 
horse. 

Then  happened  a  horrible  thing.  One 
of  the  tiniest,  with  blue  eyes  and  golden 
curls,  ran  over  to  me  laughing  and  call- 
ing, "Madame,  mon  pere  est  mort!" 
"Madame,  my  father  is  dead,  my  father  is 


THE  CRADLES  ON  THE  MEUSE     31 

dead,  he  was  shot!"  I  covered  my  ears 
with  my  hands,  then  snatched  her  up  and 
silenced  her.  There  were  others  ready 
to  call  the  same  thing,  but  the  nurses 
stopt  them. 

The  little  ones  went  on  with  their  romp- 
ing while  I  passed  inside  to  see  the  equip- 
ment for  caring  for  them.  In  a  good- 
sized,  airy  room  were  long  rows  of  white 
cradles,  one  for  each  child,  with  his  or 
her  name  and  age  written  on  a  white  card 
at  the  top.  After  their  play  and  their 
dinner  they  were  put  to  sleep  in  these 
fresh  cradles. 

They  were  brought  by  their  mothers  or 
friends  before  seven  in  the  morning,  to 
be  taken  care  of  until  seven  at  night. 
They  were  bathed,  their  clothing  was 
changed  to  a  sort  of  simple  uniform,  and 
then  they  were  turned  loose  outside  to 
play,  or  to  be  amused  in  various  ways  by 
the  faithful  nurses.  They  were  weighed 
regularly,  examined  by  a  physician,  and 


32  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

daily  given  the  nourishing  food  provided 
by  the  relief  committee.  In  fact,  they 
had  the  splendid  care  common  to  the 
1,900  creches  or  children's  shelters  in 
Belgium.  But  this  creche  was  alone  in 
its  strange,  tragic  setting. 

In  the  midst  of  utter  ruin  are  swung 
the  white  cradles.  In  front  of  them,  un- 
der the  guardianship  of  gay  cocks  and 
lions,  golden-haired  babies  are  laughing 
and  romping.  Further  on  more  ruins, 
desolation,  silence ! 


IV 

THE   LITTLE   BEES" 


MADAME  has  charge  of  a 
Cantine  for  Enf ants  Debiles  (chil- 
dren below  normal  health)  in 
one  of  the  crowded  quarters  of  Brussels. 
These  cantines  are  dining-rooms  where 
little  ones  come  from  the  schools  at 
eleven  each  morning  for  a  nourishing 
meal.  They  form  the  chief  department 
of  the  work  of  the  "Little  Bees,"  a  society 
which  is  taking  care  of  practically  all  the 
children,  babies  and  older  ones,  in  this 
city,  who  are  in  one  way  or  another  vic- 
tims of  the  war.  And  in  July,  1916,  they 
numbered  about  25,000. 

The  cantines  have  been  opened  in  every 
section  of  the  city,  in  a  vacant  shop,  a 

33 


34.  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

cellar,  a  private  home,  a  garage,  a  con- 
vent— in  any  available,  usable  place.  But 
no  matter  how  inconvenient  the  building, 
skilful  women  transform  it  at  once  into 
something  clean  and  cheery.  In  the  whole 
of  Belgium  I  have  never  seen  a  run- 
down or  dirty  relief  center.  In  some  the 
kitchen  is  simply  a  screened-off  corner  of 
the  dining-room,  in  others  it  is  a  separate 
and  excellently  equipped  quarter.  I 
visited  one  crowded  cantine  where  every 
clay  the  women  had  to  carry  up  and  down 
a  narrow  ladder  stairway  all  the  plates 
and  food  for  over  470  children.  But  they 
have  so  long  ago  ceased  to  think  in  terms 
of  "tiredness,"  that  they  are  troubled  by 
the  question  suggesting  it.  And  these 
are  the  women  who  have  been  for  over 
nine  hundred  days  now — shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  the  men — ladling  out  one 
and  one-quarter  million  pints  of  soup,  and 
cooking  for,  and  scrubbing  for,  and  yearn- 
ing over,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  more 


"THE  LITTLE  BEES"  35 

helpless  women  and  children,  while  caring 
always  for  their  own  families  at  home. 
If  after  a  long  walk  to  the  cantine  (they 
have  neither  motors  nor  bicycles)  madame 
finds  there  are  not  enough  carrots  for  the 
stew,  she  can  not  telephone — she  must  go 
to  fetch  whatever  ingredient  she  wants! 
Each  cantine  has  its  own  pantry  or  shop 
with  its  precious  stores  of  rice,  beans, 
sugar,  macaroni,  bacon  and  other  food- 
stuffs of  the  C.  R.  B.,  and  in  addition 
the  fresh  vegetables,  potatoes,  eggs  and 
meat  it  solicits  or  buys  with  the  money 
gathered  from  door  to  door,  the  gift  of 
the  suffering  to  the  suffering. 

The  weekly  menus  are  a  triumph  of 
ingenuity;  they  prove  what  variety  can 
be  had  in  apparent  uniformity !  They  are 
all  based  on  scientific  analysis  of  food  val- 
ues, and  follow  strictly  physicians' instruc- 
tions. One  day  there  are  more  grammes 
of  potatoes,  another  more  grammes 
of  macaroni  in  the  stew;  one  noon 


36  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

there  is  rice  for  dessert,  the  next  phos- 
phatine  and  now  a  hygienic  biscuit — a 
thick,  wholesome  one — as  big  as  our, 
American  cracker. 

It  was  raining  as  I  entered  the  large, 
modern  tenement  building  which  Madame 
had  been  fortunate  enough  to  secure.  I 
found  on  one  side  a  group  of  mothers 
waiting  for  food  to  take  home  to  their 
babies,  and  on  the  other  the  little  office 
through  which  every  child  had  to  pass  to 
have  his  ticket  stamped  before  he  could 
go  upstairs  to  his  dinner.  This  examin- 
ing and  stamping  of  cards  by  the  thou- 
sand, day  after  day,  is  in  itself  a  most 
arduous  piece  of  work,  but  women  ac- 
complish it  cheerfully. 

On  the  second  floor,  between  two  large 
connecting  rooms,  I  found  Madame,  in 
white,  superintending  the  day's  prepara- 
tion of  the  tables  for  1,662.  That  was 
the  size  of  her  family!  Fourteen  young 
women,  with  bees  embroidered  in  the 


37 

Belgian  colors  on  their  white  caps,  were 
flying  to  and  fro  from  the  kitchen  to  the 
long  counters  in  the  hallway  piled  with 
plates,  then  to  the  shelves  against  the 
walls  of  the  dining-room,  where  they  de- 
posited their  hundreds  of  slices  of  bread 
and  saucers  for  dessert.  Some  were 
hurrying  the  soup  plates  and  the  1,662 
white  bowls  along  the  tables,  while  others 
poured  milk  or  went  on  with  the  bread- 
cutting.  Several  women  were  perspiring 
in  the  kitchens  and  vegetable  rooms.  The 
potato-peeling  machine,  the  last  proud 
acquisition  which  was  saving  them  un- 
told labor,  had  turned  out  the  day's  kilos 
of  potatoes,  which  were  already  cooked 
with  meat,  carrots  and  green  vegetables 
into  a  thick,  savory  stew.  The  big  fifty- 
quart  cans  were  being  filled  to  be  carried 
to  the  dining-room;  the  rice  dessert  was 
getting  its  final  stirring.  Madame  was 
darting  about,  watching  every  detail,  as- 
sisting in  every  department. 


38  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

It  was  raining  outside,  but  all  was 
white,  and  clean,  and  inviting  within. 
Suddenly  there  was  a  rush  of  feet  in  the 
courtyard  below.  I  looked  out  the  win- 
dow: in  the  rain  1,662  children,  between 
three  and  fourteen  years,  mothers  often 
leading  the  smaller  ones — not  an  umbrella 
or  rubber  among  them — were  lining  up 
with  their  cards,  eager  to  be  passed  by 
the  sergeant.  These  kind-hearted,  long- 
suffering  sergeants  kept  this  wavering 
line  in  place,  as  the  children  noisily 
climbed  the  long  stairway — calling,  push- 
ing. One  little  girl  stept  out  to  put  fresh 
flowers  before  the  bust  of  the  Queen. 
Boys  and  girls  under  six  crowded  into 
the  first  of  the  large,  airy  rooms,  older 
girls  into  the  second,  while  the  bigger 
boys  climbed  to  the  floor  above.  With 
much  chattering  and  shuffling  of  sabots 
they  slid  along  the  low  benches  to  their 
places  at  the  long,  narrow  tables.  The 
women  hurried  between  the  wiggling 


"THE  LITTLE  BEES"  39 

rows,  ladling  out  the  hot,  thick  soup.  The 
air  was  filled  with  cries  of  "Beaucoup, 
Mademoiselle,  beaucoup!"  A  few  even 
said  "Only  a  little,  Mademoiselle."  Every- 
body said  something.  One  tiny,  golden- 
haired  thing  pleaded :  "You  know  I  like 
the  little  pieces  of  meat  best."  In  no  time 
they  discovered  that  I  was  new,  and  tried 
slyly  to  induce  me  to  give  them  extra 
slices  of  bread,  or  bowls  of  milk. 

In  this  multitude  each  was  clamoring 
for  individual  attention,  and  for  the  most 
part  getting  it.  Very  little  ones  were 
being  helped  to  feed  themselves;  second 
portions  of  soup  were  often  given  if 
asked  for.  Madame  seemed  to  be  every- 
where at  once,  lifting  one  after  another 
in  her  arms  to  get  a  better  look  at  eyes 
or  glands.  Her  husband,  a  physician  of 
international  reputation,  was  in  the  little 
clinic  at  the  end  of  the  hall,  weighing  and 
examining  those  whose  turn  it  was  to  go 
to  him  that  day.  Later  he  came  out  and 


40  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

passed  up  and  down  the  rows  to  get  an 
impression  of  the  general  condition  of 
this  extraordinary  family.  When  for  a 
moment  husband  and  wife  stood  together 
in  the  middle  of  the  vast  room,  they 
seemed  with  infinite  solicitude  to  be 
gathering  all  the  1,662  in  their  arms — 
their  own  boy  is  at  the  front.  And  all 
the  time  the  1,662  were  rapidly  devour- 
ing their  bread  and  soup. 

Then  began  the  cries  of  "Dessert, 
Mademoiselle,  dessert!"  Tired  arms  car- 
ried the  1,662  soup  plates  to  the  kitchen, 
ladled  out  1,662  portions  of  rice,  and  set 
them  before  eager  rows.  Such  a  final 
scraping  of  spoons,  such  fascinating  play 
of  voice  and  gesture — then  the  last  crumb 
eaten,  they  crowded  up  to  offer  sticky 
hands  with  "Merci,  Mademoiselle"  and 
"Au  revoir."  The  clatter  of  sabots  and 
laughter  died  away  through  the  court- 
yard, and  the  hundreds  started  back  to 
school. 


"THE  LITTLE  BEES"  41 

The  strong  American  physician,  who 
had  helped  ladle  the  soup,  tried  to  swing 
his  arm  back  into  position.  I  looked  at 
the  women  who  had  been  doing  this  prac- 
tically every  day  for  seven  hundred  days. 
Madame  was  apparently  not  thinking  of 
resting — only  of  the  next  day's  ration. 

I  discovered  later  that  at  four  o'clock 
that  afternoon  she  had  charge  of  a  can- 
tine  for  four  hundred  mothers  and  their 
new  babies,  and  that  after  that  she  visited 
the  family  of  a  little  boy  who  was  absent, 
according  to  the  children,  because  his 
shirt  was  being  washed. 

All  attempts  to  express  admiration  of 
this  beautiful  devotion  are  interrupted  by 
the  cry,  "Oh,  but  it  is  you — it  is  America 
that  is  doing  the  astonishing  thing — we 
must  give  ourselves,  but  you  need  not. 
Your  gift  to  us  is  the  finest  expression 
of  sympathy  the  world  has  known." 


42  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

II 

Before  Madame  . . .  was  made  director 
of  the  cantine  for  1,662,  she  had  charge 
of  one  in  a  still  poorer  quarter  of  the 
city.  I  went  to  look  for  it  on  Assumption 
Day,  the  day  of  the  Ascent  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin.  I  knew  the  street,  and  as  usual, 
the  waiting  line  of  children  in  front  told 
the  number.  Scrubbed  cheeks,  occasional 
ribbon  bows  and  cheap  embroidery 
flounces  showed  the  attempt  of  even  these 
very  poor  mothers  to  celebrate  their  fete 
day.  Throughout  the  city,  those  for- 
tunate enough  to  be  called  Mary  were 
being  presented  with  flowers,  which  since 
the  war  have  been  sold  at  extremely  low 
prices,  for  the  flowers  still  grow  for  Bel- 
gium, who  supplied  the  markets  of 
Europe  before  she  was  besieged. 

From  early  morning  we  had  seen  old 
and  young  carrying  great  sheaves  of 
phlox  and  roses,  or  pots  of  hortensia,  to 


"THE  LITTLE  BEES"  43 

some  favorite  Mary.  But  these  little 
ones  had  no  flowers,  yet  they  were 
gay,  as  Belgian  children  invariably 
are — always  ready  with  the  swiftest 
smiles  and  outstretched  hands,  or  with 
a  pretty  song  if  one  asks  for  it.  Lit* 
tie  tots  of  three  know  any  number  of 
the  interminable  chansons  familiar  in 
France  and  Belgium.  They  chattered  and 
laughed,  caught  my  hand  as  I  went  down 
the  stairs — for  this  dining-quarter  is  be- 
low the  sidewalk,  in  rooms  that  are  known 
as  "caves."  I  was  prepared  for  some- 
thing dark  and  cheerless,  instead  I  found 
the  whitewashed  walls  gay  with  nursery, 
pictures  and  Belgian  and  American  flags. 
The  long  tables  were  covered  with  bright 
red-and-white  checked  oilcloth.  The  small 
windows  opening  just  above  the  sidewalk 
allowed  sufficient  light  and  air  to  keep 
everything  fresh.  The  kitchen  was  im- 
maculate— shelves  for  shining  vessels, 
others  for  the  sacks  of  sugar,  boxes  of 


44  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

macaroni.  On  a  table  stood  the  inevitable 
scales — Thursday  is  weighing  day,  when 
one  of  the  best  physicians  of  Brussels  ex- 
amines the  children,  recording  the  weights 
that  form  the  basis  for  judgment  as  to 
the  success  of  the  ration. 

The  430  bowls  of  milk  were  already  on 

the  tables.     Madame was  hurrying 

about  among  her  helpers — twelve  faith- 
ful Belgian  women.  They  had  all  been 
there  since  eight  o'clock,  for  this  was  a 
viande  day  (there  are  three  a  week)  and 
when  there  is  meat  that  must  be  cut  into 
little  pieces  for  between  four  and  five 
hundred  children,  it  means  an  early  start. 
Two  women  were  still  stirring  (with  long 
wooden  spoons)  the  great  tub  full  of 
savory  macaroni  and  carrots — a  test  in 
itself  for  muscle  and  endurance.  The 
meat  was  in  separate  kettles.  The  bread 
had  been  cut  into  over  400  portions.  The 
phosphatine  dessert  (of  which  the  chil- 
dren can  not  get  enough)  was  already 


"THE  LITTLE  BEES"  45 

served  at  a  side  table.  The  "Little  Bees" 
originated  this  phosphatine  dessert,  which 
is  a  mixture  of  rice,  wheat  and  maize — 
flour,  phosphate  of  lime  and  cocoa.  They 
have  a  factory  for  making  it,  and  up  to 
August,  1916,  had  turned  out  638,000 
kilos. 

A  gentleman  in  black  frock  suit  and 
large  hat  came  in  to  look  about,  and  then 
went  back  to  the  lengthening  line.  Madame 
explained  that  he  was  the  principal  of  the 
communal  school  of  the  quarter,  and  that 
he  came  every  day  to  keep  the  children 
in  order.  I  learned,  too,  that  on  every 
single  day  of  the  vacation,  which  had  be- 
gun and  was  to  continue  until  the  middle 
of  September,  he  and  one  of  his  teachers 
went  to  the  school  to  distribute  to  all  the 
school-children  the  little  roll  of  white 
bread  that  they  are  allowed  at  eight- 
thirty  each  morning.  Many  of  these  have 
but  little  at  home.  This  roll  helps  them 
out  until  the  cantine  meal  at  eleven- 


46  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

thirty,  which  can  be  had  only  on  a  phy- 
sician's authorization.  From  now  on  a 
larger  meal  is  to  be  given  in  the  schools 
— a  joy  not  only  to  the  pupils  but  to  their 
teachers,  who  everywhere  are  devoting 
themselves  to  this  work  of  saving  their 
children.  Several  of  the  younger  women 
helping  Madame  had  been  working 
wearily  all  the  year  in  the  professional 
schools,  but  as  soon  as  their  vacations 
arrived,  begged  to  be  allowed  to  give 
their  time  to  the  cantines.  They  were 
all  most  attractive  in  their  white  aprons 
and  caps — most  serious  in  their  attention 
to  the  individual  wants  of  that  hungry 
family. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  principal  ap- 
peared again — all  was  ready  now.  Then 
the  little  ones  began  to  march  in.  They 
came  by  way  of  an  anteroom,  where  they 
had  their  hands  washed,  if  they  needed 
washing — and  most  of  them  did — and 
quite  proudly  held  them  up  as  they  passed 


"THE  LITTLE  BEES"  47 

by  us.  They  were  of  all  sizes  between 
three  and  fourteen.  One  pale  little  fel- 
low was  led  in  by  his  grandmother  who 
was  admitted  (tho  no  mothers  or  grand- 
mothers are  supposed  to  come  inside),  be- 
cause he  wailed  the  minute  she  left  him. 
It  was  easy  to  see  why  mothers  could  not 
be  allowed,  tho  one  was  glad  the  rule 
could  be  broken,  and  that  this  sad,  white- 
faced  grandmother  could  feed  her  own 
charge.  It  was  terrible,  too,  to  realize 
what  that  plate  of  savory  stew  would 
have  meant  to  her,  and  to  see  that  she 
touched  no  morsel  of  it.  Even  if  there 
had  been  an  extra  portion,  the  women 
could  not  have  given  it  to  her:  the  fol- 
lowing day  the  street  would  have  been 
filled  with  others,  for  whom  there  could 
not  possibly  be  extra  portions. 

If  a  child  is  too  ill  to  come  for  its  din- 
ner, a  member  of  the  family  can  carry  it 
home.  Practically  all  the  cantines  have 
a  visiting  nurse  who  investigates  such 


48  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

cases,  and  keeps  the  number  much  lower 
than  it  would  otherwise  be. 

When  I  asked  Madame  how  she  was 
able  to  give  so  much  time  (from  about 
8  A.M.  till  I  or  2  P.M.  every  day  of  the 
year),  she  smiled  and  shrugged  her 
shoulders :  "But  that  is  the  least  one  can 
do,  the  very  least!  One  never  thinks  of 
the  work,  it  is  of  the  children — and  we 
know  they  love  us — we  see  them  being 
kept  alive!  Some  of  them  are  getting 
stronger — these  weaklings.  What  more 
can  we  wish?" 


MRS.   .WHITLOCK'S   VISIT 

THE  second  time,  I  visited  Madame's 
cantine  with  the  wife  of  the  Ameri- 
can Minister,  and  I  found  what  it 
meant  to  be  the  wife  of  the  United  States 
Minister  in  Belgium!  From  the  corner 
above  to  the  entrance  of  the  court  the 
street  was  lined  with  people.  At  the 
gateway  we  were  met  by  a  committee 
headed  by  the  wife  of  the  Bourgmestre  of 
Brussels.  Within  the  court  were  the 
hundreds  of  children — with  many  more 
mothers  this  time — all  waiting  ex- 
pectantly, all  specially  scrubbed,  tho  no 
amount  of  scrubbing  could  conceal  their 
sad  lack  of  shoes.  There  were  smiles 

49 


50  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

and  greetings  and  little  hands  stretched 
out  all  along  the  line  as  we  passed. 

Inside  there  was  no  more  than  the 
usual  cleanliness — for  the  cantines  are 
scrupulously  kept.  Madame  and  her  as- 
sistants had  tiny  American  flags  pinned 
to  their  white  uniforms.  In  the  corridors 
the  American  and  Belgian  flags  hung  to- 
gether. A  special  permission  had  been 
obtained  to  take  a  photograph  of  their 
guest  at  the  window. 

The  tables  were  laid,  the  lines  began 
moving.  As  the  little  girls  filed  in,  one 
of  them  came  forward,  and  with  a  pretty 
courtesy  offered  Mrs.  Whitlock  a  large 
bouquet  of  red  roses.  The  boys  followed, 
and  their  representative,  struggling  with 
shyness,  recited  a  poem  as  he  gave  his 
flowers.  All  the  children  were  very  much 
imprest  with  this  simple  ceremony,  and 
under  the  two  flags,  as  the  quavering 
little  voice  gave  thanks  to  "those  who 
were  bringing  them  their  daily  bread," 


MRS.  WHITLOCK'S  VISIT  51 

there  were  no  grown-ups  without  tears 
in  their  eyes. 

American  flags  of  one  kind  or  another 
hang  in  all  the  cantines,  along  with  pic- 
tures of  President  Wilson,  mottos  ex- 
pressing thanks  to  America,  C.  R.  B. 
flour-sacks  elaborately  embroidered — on 
all  sides  are  attempts  to  express  gratitude 
and  affection. 

That  morning,  as  the  Legation  car 
turned  a  corner,  a  little  old  Flemish  lady 
in  a  white  frilled  cap  stept  forward  and 
clapped  her  hands  as  the  American  flag 
floated  by.  Men  lift  their  hats  to  it,  chil- 
dren salute  it.  In  the  shop  windows  one 
often  sees  it  draping  the  pictures  of  the 
King  and  Queen! 

This  is  not  a  tribute  to  the  American 
flag  alone,  but  also  to  the  personality  of 
the  man  who  has  so  splendidly  represented 
this  flag  and  to  the  men  who  carried  the 
American  soul  and  its  works  into  Bel- 
gium through  the  C.  R.  B.  Belgium  will 


52  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

never  forget  its  immediate  debt  to  Brand 
Whitlock  and  to  these  hundreds  of  Ameri- 
cans whose  personal  service  to  this  coun- 
try in  its  darkest  hour  is  already  a  matter 
of  history.  Just  as  Mrs.  Whitlock  was 
leaving,  Madame  fortunately  discovered 
a  shabby  little  girl  who  still  squeezed  a 
bedraggled  bunch  of  white  roses — and 
made  her  happy  by  bringing  her  forward 
to  present  it. 

These  children,  as  I  have  said,  are  all 
in  need  of  special  nourishment,  they  are 
those  who  have  fallen  by  the  wayside  in 
the  march,  brought  down  by  the  stern 
repression  of  the  food  supply.  One  of  the 
most  striking  effects  of  the  war  has  been 
the  rapid  increase  in  tuberculosis.  Many 
of  the  thousands  in  the  cantines  are  the 
victims  of  "glands"  or  some  other  dread 
form  of  this  disease. 

However,  in  some  respects  the  children 
of  the  very  poor  are  better  off  than  they 
have  ever  been.  For  the  first  time  they 


MRS.  WHITLOCK'S  VISIT  53 

are  receiving  nourishing  food  at  regular 
hours.  And  this  ration,  along  with  the 
training  in  hygiene  and  medical  atten- 
tion, is  having  its  good  effect. 

One  hundred  and  twenty-five  phy- 
sicians are  contributing  their  services  to 
the  "Little  Bees"  in  Brussels  alone, 
where,  during  the  first  six  months  of 
1916,  infant  mortality  had  decreased  19 
per  cent.  It  would  be  difficult  to  estimate 
the  time  given  by  physicians  throughout 
the  whole  country,  but  probably  half  of 
the  4,700  are  contributing  practically  all 
their  time,  and  almost  all  are  doing  some- 
thing. It  is  a  common  sight  in  the  late 
afternoon  to  see  a  physician  who  has  had 
a  full,  hard  day,  rushing  to  a  cantine  to 
examine  hundreds  of  children.  Outside 
the  zone  of  military  preparation,  200,000 
sub-normal  children  of  from  three  to 
seventeen  years,  and  over  53,000  babies 
under  three  months,  are  on  their  "relief" 
lists,  besides  a  large  number  of  adults. 


54  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Outside  Brussels,  the  cantines  are  con- 
ducted in  much  the  same  way  as  those  of 
the  "Little  Bees."  Committees  of  women 
everywhere  are  devoting  themselves  to 
the  children. 


VI 


THE    BATHTUB 

WAY  over  in  the  northeast,  in 
Hasselt,  a  town  of  17,000  in- 
habitants, there  is  an  especially 
interesting  cantine — only  one  of  thou- 
sands in  Belgium,  mind  you!  A  year 
ago,  when  a  California  professor  was 
leaving  San  Francisco  to  become  a  C.  R. 
B.  representative,  he  was  offered  a  fare- 
well dinner — and  in  the  hall  his  hostess 
placed  a  basket,  with  obvious  intent !  The 
money  was  not  for  the  general  fund,  but 
to  be  spent  by  him  personally  for  some 
child  in  need. 

He  was  assigned  to  Hasselt,  for  the 
Province  of  Limbourg,  and  there  he  very 
soon  decided  that  a  splendid  young  Bel- 
gian woman  who  had  been  giving  her 

55 


56  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

whole  time  to  nursing  wounded  soldiers 
would  be  the  person  to  know  which  of 
their  children  was  most  in  need  of  his 
little  fund.  When  he  proposed  turning  it 
over  to  her,  she  quite  broke  down  at  the 
opportunity  it  offered.  She  and  her 
mother  were  living  in  a  rather  large 
house,  but  on  a  limited  income.  She 
would  find  the  sick  child  and  care  for  it 
in  her  own  home.  A  few  days  later  the 
professor  called  to  see  her  "child" — and 
he  found  twelve!  She  had  not  been  able 
to  stop — most  of  them  were  children 
whose  fathers  were  at  the  front.  They 
were  suffering  from  rickets,  arrested  de- 
velopment, paralysis,  malnutrition.  She 
was  bathing  them,  feeding  them,  and  fol- 
lowing the  instructions  of  a  physician, 
whom  she  had  already  interested.  Her 
fund  was  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars, 
but  in  her  hands  it  seemed  inexhaustible. 
She  added  children,  one  after  another. 
Then,  finally,  the  Relief  Committee 


THE  BATHTUB  57 

came  to  the  support  of  her  splendid  and 
necessary  work  with  its  usual  monthly 
subsidy,  with  which  the  women  buy  the 
supplies  most  needed  from  the  relief 
shops.  She  is  now  installed  in  the  middle 
of  the  town — with  a  kitchen  and  dining- 
room  downstairs,  and  a  little  clinic  and 
bathroom  upstairs.  The  forty-six 
centimes  (less  than  ten  cents)  a  day 
which  she  received  per  child,  enabled  her 
to  furnish  an  excellent  meal  for  each. 
But  she  soon  found  that  her  children 
could  not  be  built  up  on  one  meal,  and 
she  stretched  her  small  subsidy  to  cover 
a  breakfast  at  eight  and  a  dinner  at 
four  to  100  children.  She  balances  the 
ration,  makes  the  daily  milk  tests,  looks 
after  every  detail  personally.  Upstairs 
in  the  prized  tub  devoted  helpers 
bathe  the  children  who  need  washing, 
care  for  their  heads,  and  for  all  the 
various  ailments  of  a  family  of  100  sub- 
normal children.  Because  of  the  glycerine 


58  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

it  contains,  soap  has  been  put  on  the  "non- 
entry"  list,  which  makes  it  so  expensive 
that  the  very  poor  are  entirely  without  it. 
The  price  has  increased  300  per  cent, 
since  the  war.  Incidentally,  one  of  the 
reasons  for  the  high  price  of  butter  is 
that  it  can  be  sold  for  making  soap,  at  an 
extraordinary  figure. 

This  particular  tub  is  a  tribute  to  the 
ingenuity  of  the  present  American  repre- 
sentative— also  a  professor,  but  from 
farther  East.  Before  the  terrific  problem 
of  giving  children  enough  bread  and 
potatoes  to  keep  them  alive,  bathrooms 
sometimes  appear  an  unnecessary  luxury. 
The  relief  committee  could  not  furnish 
Mademoiselle  a  bathroom!  But  to  those 
working  with  the  sick  and  dirty  children 
it  seemed  all-essential.  Hasselt  is  not  a 
rich  town,  everybody's  resources  had 
been  drained — how  should  the  money  be 
found?  Finally  the  C.  R.  B.  delegate 
had  an  inspiration — there  was  a  big 


THE  BATHTUB  59 

swimming-tank  in  Hasselt.  To  the  peo- 
ple, the  American  representative,  tho 
loved,  is  always  a  more  or  less  surprizing 
person.  If  it  could  be  announced  that  by 
paying  a  small  sum  they  could  see  the 
strange  American  swim,  everybody  who 
had  the  small  sum  would  come — he  would 
swim  for  the  bathroom!  It  was  an- 
nounced, and  they  came,  and  that  swim- 
ming fete  will  go  down  in  the  annals  of 
the  town!  The  cantine  got  its  bath- 
room, and  there  was  enough  left  over  to 
buy  a  very  necessary  baby-scales. 

Mademoiselle  took  us  to  the  houses 
where  we  saw  the  misery  of  mothers  left 
with  seven,  nine,  eleven  children,  in  one 
or  two  little  rooms.  There  was  no  wage- 
earner — he  was  at  the  front;  or  there 
was  no  work.  One  woman  was  crying  as 
we  went  in.  She  explained  that  her  son, 
"a  bad  one,"  had  just  been  trying  to  take 
his  father's  boots.  She  pulled  out  from 
behind  the  basket  where  the  twins  were 


60  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

sleeping  under  the  day's  washing,  a  bat- 
tered pair  of  coarse,  high  boots.  There 
were  holes  in  the  hob-nailed  soles,  there 
was  practically  no  heel  left.  The  heavy 
tops  still  testified  to  an  original  stout 
leather,  but  never  could  one  see  a  more 
miserable,  run-down-at-the-heel,  leaky, 
and  useless  pair  of  boots.  Yet  to  that 
woman  they  represented  a  fortune — 
there  is  practically  no  leather  left  in  the 
country,  and  if  there  were,  how  could  her 
man,  when  he  came  back,  have  the  money 
to  buy  another  pair,  and  how  could  he 
work  in  the  fields  without  his  boots? 
There  were  eight  children — eight  had 
died. 

And  she  wept  bitterly  because  of  the 
son  who  had  tried  to  take  his  father's 
boots,  as  she  hid  them  behind  the  twin's 
basket.  I  had  heard  of  the  sword  as  the 
symbol  of  the  honor  and  power  of  the 
house;  in  bitter  reality  it  is  the  father's 
one  pair  of  boots! 


VII 

THE    BREAD    IN    THE    HAND 

I  SOON  came  to  have  the  curious 
feeling  about  the  silent  stone  fronts 
of  the  houses  that  if  I  could  but 
look  through  them  I  should  see  women 
sorting  garments,  women  making  pat- 
terns for  lace,  women  ladling  soup,  paint- 
ing toys,  washing  babies.  Up  and  down 
the  stairs  of  these  inconvenient  buildings 
they  are  running  all  day  long,  back  and 
forth,  day  after  day,  seeking  through  a 
heroic  cheerfulness,  a  courageous  smile, 
to  hold  back  tears. 

And  chiefly  I  was  overwhelmed  by  the 
enormous  quantities  of  food  they  are 
handling.  The  whole  city  seems  turned 
into  a  kitchen — and  there  follows  the  in- 

61 


63  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

evitable  question:  "Where  does  it  all 
come  from?"  The  women  who  are  doing 
the  work  connect  directly  with  the  local 
Belgian  organizations,  by  the  great  sys- 
tem of  decentralization,  which  is  the  key- 
note of  the  C.  R.  B.  Just  these  three 
magic  letters  spell  the  answer  to  the  in- 
evitable question. 

At  the  C.  R.  B.  bureau  I  had  seen 
the  charts  lining  the  corridors.  They 
seemed  alive,  changing  every  day,  mark- 
ing the  ships  on  the  ocean,  the  number  of 
tons  of  rice,  wheat,  maize  or  sugar  ex- 
pected ;  and  how  these  tons  count  up !  In 
the  two  years  that  have  passed,  1,000,000 
tons  each  year,  meaning  practically  one 
ship  every  weekday  in  the  month;  90,000 
tons  at  one  time  on  the  Atlantic!  Other 
charts  show  the  transit  of  goods  already 
unloaded  at  Rotterdam.  Over  200 
lighters  are  in  constant  movement  on 
their  way  down  the  canals  to  the  various 
C.  R.  B.  warehouses,  which  means  about 


THE  BREAD  IN  THE  HAND       63 

50,000  tons  afloat  all  the  time.  I  had 
seen,  too,  the  reports  of  the  enormous 
quantities  of  clothing  brought  in — 
4,000,000  dollars  worth,  almost  all  of  it 
the  free  gift  of  the  United  States. 

In  the  director's  room  were  other  maps 
showing  the  territory  in  charge  of  each 
American.  Back  of  every  cantine  and  its 
power  to  work  stands  this  American,  the 
living  guaranty  to  England  that  the 
Germans  are  not  getting  the  food,  the 
guaranty  to  Germany  of  an  equal  neutral- 
ity, and  to  the  Belgians  themselves  the 
guaranty  that  the  gifts  of  the  world  to 
her,  and  those  of  herself  to  her  own  peo- 
ple, would  be  brought  in  as  wheat  through 
the  steel  ring  that  had  cut  her  off.  One 
had  only  to  think  of  the  C.  R.  B.  door  in 
the  steel  ring  as  closed,  to  realize  the  posi- 
tion of  this  neutral  commission.  The 
total  result  of  their  daily  and  hourly  co- 
ordination of  all  this  organization  inside 
Belgium,  their  solitude  for  each  class  of 


64  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

the  population,  their  dull  and  dry  calcula- 
tions of  protein,  fat  and  carbohydrates, 
bills  of  lading,  cars,  canal  boats,  mills  and 
what  not,  is  the  replenishing  of  the  life- 
stream  of  a  nation's  blood. 

Thus,  the  food  dispensed  by  the  women 
is  part  of  the  constantly  entering  mass, 
and  between  its  purchase,  or  its  receipt  as 
gift  by  the  C.  R.  B.,  and  its  appearance 
as  soup  for  adults,  or  pudding  for  chil- 
dren, is  the  whole  intricate  structure  of 
the  relief  organization.  The  audible 
music  of  this  creation  is  the  clatter  of 
hundreds  of  typewriters,  the  tooting  of 
tugs  and  shrieks  of  locomotives,  but  the 
undertones  are  the  harmonies  of  devo- 
tion. 

Everybody  who  can  pay  for  his  food 
must  do  so — it  is  sold  at  a  fair  profit,  and 
it  is  this  profit,  gained  from  those  who 
still  have  money,  that  goes  over  to  the 
women  in  charge  of  the  cantines  for  the 
purchase  of  supplies  for  the  destitute. 


THE  BREAD  IN  THE  HAND       65 

They  often  supplement  this  subsidy 
through  a  house-to-house  appeal  to  the 
people.  For  instance,  in  Brussels,  the 
"Little  Bees"  are  untiring  in  their  can- 
vass. Basket  on  arm,  continually  they 
solicit  an  egg,  a  bunch  of  carrots,  a  bit 
of  meat,  or  a  money  gift.  They  have 
been  able  to  count  on  about  5,000  eggs 
and  about  2,500  francs  a  week,  besides 
various  other  things.  Naturally,  the  peo- 
ple in  the  poorer  sections  can  contribute 
but  small  amounts,  but  it  is  here  that  one 
finds  the  most  touching  examples  of 
generosity — the  old  story  of  those  who 
have  suffered  and  understood.  One 
woman  who  earns  just  a  franc  a  day  and 
on  it  has  to  support  herself  and  her 
family,  carefully  wraps  her  weekly  two- 
centime  piece  (two-fifths  of  a  cent)  and 
has  it  ready  when  one  of  the  "Little 
Bees"  calls  for  it. 


66  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

OUR  AMERICAN  YOUNG  MEN 

Monsieur  . . . ,  a  committee  leader  in  the 
Hainaut,  once  said  to  me,  "Madame,  one 
of  the  big  things  Belgium  will  win  in  this 
war  is  a  true  appreciation  of  the  charac- 
ter and  capacity  (quite  aside  from  their 
idealism)  of  American  young  men. 

"I'll  confess/'  he  continued,  "that  when 
that  initial  group  of  young  Americans 
came  rushing  in  with  those  first  heaven- 
sent cargoes  of  wheat,  we  were  not 
strongly  reassured.  We  knew  that  for 
the  moment  we  were  saved,  but  it  was 
difficult  to  see  how  these  youths,  however 
zealous  and  clear-eyed,  were  goingj  to 
meet  the  disaster  as  we  knew  it. 

"We  organized,  as  you  know,  our  local 
committees,  and  headed  them  by  our  Bel- 
gians of  widest  experience;  our  lawyers 
of  fifty  or  sixty,  our  bankers,  our  leaders 
of  industry.  We  could  set  all  the  machin- 
ery, but  nothing  would  work  unless  the 


THE  BREAD  IN  THE  HAND       67 

Americans  would  stand  with  us.  The  in- 
structions read :  'The  American  and  your 
Belgian  chairmen  will  jointly  manage  the 
relief/ 

"And  who  came  to  stand  with  us? 
Who  came  to  stand  with  me,  for  instance  ? 
You  see,"  and  he  pointed  to  splendid 
broad-shouldered  C.  ahead  of  us,  "that 
lad — not  a  day  over  twenty-eight — just 
about  the  age  of  my  boys  in  the  trenches, 
and  who,  heaven  knows,  is  now  almost  as 
dear  to  us  as  they! 

"But  in  the  beginning  I  couldn't  see  it  ; 
I  simply  couldn't  believe  C.  was  going  to 
be  able  to  handle  his  end  of  our  terrific 
problem.  But  day  by  day  I  watched  this 
lad  quietly  getting  a  sense  of  the  situa- 
tion, then  plunging  into  it,  getting  under 
it,  developing  an  instinct  for  diplomacy 
along  with  his  natural  genius  for  direct- 
ness and  practicality  that  bewildered  me. 
It  has  amazed  us  all. 

"We  soon  learned  that  we  need  not 


68  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

fear  to  trust  ourselves  to  that  type  of 
character,  to  its  adaptability  and  capacity, 
no  matter  how  young  it  seemed." 

Of  course  there  have  been  older  Ameri- 
cans who  have  brought  to  their  Belgian 
co-workers  equal  years  as  well  as  experi- 
ence, but  one  of  the  pictures  I  like  best  to 
remember  is  this  of  Monsieur  . . . ,  a 
Belgian  of  fifty-five  or  sixty,  in  counsel 
with  his  eager  American  delegue  of 
twenty-eight.  To  the  partnership,  friend- 
ship, confidence,  the  Belgian  added  some- 
thing paternal,  and  the  American  re- 
sponded with  a  devotion  one  feels  is  life- 
long. 

Between  the  visits  to  mills  and  docks, 
and  the  grinding  over  accounts,  orders 
of  canal  boats  and  warehouses,  there  are 
hours  for  other  things.  I  remember  one 
restful  one  spent  at  this  same  Monsieur's 
table — he  is  an  excellent  Latin  scholar 
and  a  wise  philosopher — when  he  and 
his  young  American  friend  for  a  time 


THE  BREAD  IN  THE  HAND       69 

forgot  the  wheat  and  fat  in  their  de- 
light to  get  back  to  Virgil  and  Horace. 

Young  D.,  a  Yale  graduate,  furnished 
another  example  of  these  qualities  Mon- 
sieur stressed.  If  he  had  been  a  West- 
erner, his  particular  achievement  would 
have  been  less  surprizing,  but  he  came 
from  the  East. 

He  reached  Belgium  at  the  time  of  a 
milk  crisis.  We  were  attempting,  and,  in 
fact,  had  practically  arranged,  the  plan 
to  establish  C.  R.  B.  herds  adjacent  to 
towns,  to  insure  a  positive  supply  for  tiny 
babies.  The  local  committees  went  at  it, 
but  one  after  another  came  in  with  dis- 
couraging reports.  Even  their  own  peo- 
ple were  often  preventing  success  by  fear- 
ing and  sometimes  by  flatly  refusing  to 
turn  their  precious  cows  into  a  community 
herd.  Then  one  day  D.,  who,  so  far  as  I 
know,  had  never  in  his  career  been  within 
speaking  distance  of  a  cow,  put  on  some- 
thing that  looked  like  a  sombrero  and 


70  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

swung  out  across  his  province.  We  had 
hardly  had  time  to  speculate  about  what 
he  might  accomplish,  before  he  returned 
to  announce  that  he  had  rounded  up  a 
magnificent  herd,  and  that  his  district  was 
ready  to  guarantee  so  much  pure  milk 
from  that  time  on ! 

"What  had  he  done,  where  we  had 
failed?"  asked  Monsieur.  "He  had  called 
a  meeting  of  farmers  in  each  commune, 
and  said :  'We,  the  Americans,  want  from 
this  commune  five  or  ten  cows  for  the 
babies  of  your  cities.  We  give  ourselves 
to  Belgium,  you  give  your,  cows  to  us. 
We  will  give  them  back  when  the  war  is 
over — if  they  are  alive!'  And  he  got 
them!"  They  would  have  given  this 
cheerful  beggar  anything — these  stolid 
old  Flemish  peasants. 


VIII 

ONE  WOMAN 

THE  world  will  be  incredulous  when 
it  is  given  the  final  picture  of  the 
complexity    and    completeness    of 
the  Belgian  Relief  Organization.     In  all 
the  communes,  all  the  provinces,  in  the 
capital,  for  over  two  years,  groups  of  Bel- 
gians have  been  shut  in  their  bureaux 
with  figures  and  plans,  matching  needs 
with  relief. 

There  must  be  bread  and  clothing  for 
everybody,  shelter  for  the  homeless,  soup 
for  the  hungry,  food  boxes  for  prisoners 
in  Germany,  milk  for  babies,  special 
nourishment  for  the  tubercular,  orphan- 
ages and  creches  for  the  tiny  war  victims, 
work  for  the  idle,  some  means  of  secours 

71 


72  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

for  merchants,  artists,  teachers  and 
thousands  of  "ashamed  poor" — 665,000 
idle  workmen  with  their  1,000,000  de- 
pendents, 1,250,000  on  the  soupes,  53,000 
babies  and  200,000  children  under  normal 
health  in  the  cantines — how  much  of  the 
story  can  these  figures  tell  ? 

Yet  the  efforts  of  the  organization  have 
been  so  continuous  and  comprehensive, 
the  C.  R.  B.  has  been  so  steadily  bringing 
to  them  the  vital  foodstuffs,  and  holding 
for  them  the  guaranty  of  their  freedom 
to  act,  that  from  the  committee-rooms  it 
has  sometimes  seemed  as  if  there  were 
really  nothing  more  to  be  done  for  Bel- 
gium! 

But  one  has  only  to  spend  a  few  days 
at  the  other  end,  to  get  quickly  disabused 
of  this  idea!  No  amount  of  organization 
can  truly  meet  the  needs  of  the  seven  and 
a  half  million  people  of  a  small  industrial 
country,  suddenly  and  entirely  cut  off 
from  all  normal  contact  with  the  rest  of 


ONE  WOMAN  73 

the  world.  Despite  all  the  food  that  has 
been  distributed,  the  resistance  of  the  peo- 
ple has  been  lowered.  Tuberculosis  has 
seized  its  opportunity,  and  is  making 
rapid  strides.  I  have  visited  home  after 
home  where  a  heartbreaking  courage  was 
trying  to  cover  up  a  losing  struggle.  Over 
and  above  all  the  organized  "Relief," 
there  remains  an  enormous  task  for  just 
such  splendid  women  as  Madame  .  .  . 

Madame  is  the  wife  of  a  lawyer,  with 
two  sons  at  the  front.  As  soon  as  the 
war  broke  out  she  organized  a  Red  Cross 
center.  Then  the  refugees  came  pouring 
into  Brussels,  and  she  felt  that  among 
them  there  must  be  many  to  whom  it 
would  be  torture  to  be  crowded  into  the 
big  relief  shelters.  She  said  little,  but 
by  the  end  of  August  she  had  managed  to 
squeeze  five  families  in  with  her  own. 
From  the  day  the  Germans  abolished  the 
Belgian  Red  Cross  she  gave  her  entire 
time  to  helping  the  homeless  who  had 


74  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

been  in  comfortable  circumstances  before 
the  war  to  some  quiet  corner  where  they 
might  wait  its  end.  There  was  never  any 
announcement  of  her  work,  but  the  word 
spread  like  wildfire — many  had  to  be 
turned  away  daily.  Then  she  found  a 
big  home  on  the  Boulevard,  rather  shabby 
inside,  but  conveniently  arranged  for. 
suites  of  two  or  even  three  rooms.  Here 
a  considerable  number  of  families  might 
have  space  for  a  complete  menage ;  plenty 
of  light  and  air,  and  room  to  cook  and 
sleep.  Before  long  she  was  housing 
ninety-eight,  but  a  few  of  these  were  able 
to  re-establish  themselves,  so  when  I 
visited  her  in  September,  1916,  there  were 
sixty-five.  As  her  own  funds  were 
limited,  and  fast  disappearing,  she  had 
in  the  end  to  appeal  to  the  "Relief"  to 
subsidize  this  "Home." 

On  the  first  floor  she  had  a  little  pantry- 
shop,  where  each  family  received  the  per- 
mitted ration  of  bread,  sugar,  bacon  and 


ONE  WOMAN  75 

other  foodstuffs.  One  day  a  woman  came 
to  her,  hungry.  She  was  a  widow  with 
two  little  girls,  who,  before  the  war,  had 
earned  a  good  salary  in  the  post-office. 
Somehow  she  had  managed  to  exist  for 
two  years,  but  now  there  was  nothing  left. 
She  was  given  charge  of  the  pantry  at 
ten  cents  a  day.  I  have  seen  many  pro- 
cessions of  people  descending  long  stair- 
ways. I  shall  forget  them.  But  I  shall 
never  forget  this  one  of  the  refugees 
from  the  upper  floors  winding  down  the 
stairways  at  the  shop  hour,  with  their 
pathetic  plates  and  bowls  ready  for  the 
bacon  and  bread  that  made  living  possible. 
They  could,  perhaps,  add  vegetables  and 
fruit,  or  an  egg  or  two,  to  the  ration  to 
piece  out  the  meal.  On  the  lowest  shelf 
of  this  miniature  shop  were  a  few  dozen 
cans  of  American  corn,  which  even  yet 
the  people  have  not  learned  to  like.  Hav- 
ing been  brought  up  to  regard  corn  in 
all  forms  as  fit  only  for  cattle  and 


76  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

chickens,  even  disaster  can  not  convince 
them  that  it  is  a  proper  food  for  man! 

Later  we  went  upstairs  to  visit  some 
of  the  apartments.  They  were  bright  and 
clean,  with  cheery  flower-pots  on  all  the 
window-sills.  Every  one  showed  a  fine 
appreciation  of  what  was  done  for  him 
by  making  the  most  of  all  he  had;  an  at- 
titude quite  different  from  that  of  many 
less  used  to  comfort,  less  intelligent,  who 
neither  hesitate  to  demand  charity,  nor  to 
complain  of  what  they  receive.  Each 
family  had  a  small,  practical  stove,  which 
served  for  both  cooking  and  heating. 

One  family  of  eight  was  content  in  its 
two  rooms.  They  had  had  a  copper  shop 
and  a  pension  at  Dinant;  were  very  com- 
fortably off,  when,  suddenly,  Dinant  was 
struck.  All  their  property  was  in  flames, 
men  were  being  shot,  their  own  grand- 
mother, eighty-one  years  old,  had  her  leg 
broken,  and,  terror-stricken,  they  fled  with 
her  up  and  down  hill,  over  rocks  and 


ONE  WOMAN  .    77 

through  brush  till  they  reached  Namur, 
and  finally  arrived  at  Brussels  where  they 
heard  of  Madame's  "Home."  The  grand- 
mother, whose  leg  is  mended  but  still 
crooked,  was  sitting  in  front  of  the  red 
geraniums  at  a  window,  knitting  socks. 
She  knits  one  pair  a  week  and  receives  five 
cents  for  each  pair  from  the  clothing  com- 
mittee. The  young  girls  help  Madame  in 
various  ways;  the  father  tries  to  work  in 
copper,  but  if  he  earns  fifty  cents  a  week, 
considers  himself  lucky.  The  particular 
struggle  for  this  family  is  to  get  eggs 
for  the  grandmother,  who  can  not  get 
along  on  the  bacon  and  bread.  Eggs  cost 
ten  cents  each.  Happily,  this  is  a  kind  of 
situation  that  "special  funds"  from  the 
United  States  have  often  relieved.  Every- 
body was  courageous,  trying  simply  to 
hold  on  till  the  terrible  war  should  be 
ended  and  he  could  go  back  to  rebuild 
something  on  the  ruins  of  his  home. 
There  was  another  Dinant  menage  next 


78  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

door,  but  a  menage  for  one.  I  quickly 
read  this  poor  woman's  story  on  the  walls. 
On  one  was  tacked  a  large  picture  of 
Dinant,  beautiful,  smiling,  winding  along 
the  river,  as  in  July,  1914.  Above  it  was 
the  photograph  of  her  husband,  shot  in 
August;  on  the  other  wall  a  handsome 
son  in  uniform.  He  was  at  the  front. 
She  stopt  peeling  her  potatoes  to  go  over 
again  those  horrible  days.  They  had 
been  so  well  off,  so  happy,  father,  mother 
and  son.  When  they  saw  their  city  in 
flames,  they  were  too  bewildered,  too 
terror-stricken  to  realize  what  it  meant. 
Her  husband  left  to  help  restore  a  bridge 
— he  did  not  return.  The  son  hurried  to 
follow  his  King;  she  somehow  reached 
Brussels. 

There  was  a  fine  young  chap  of  about 
fifteen,  whose  father  had  been  killed  at 
Manceau  sur  Sambre.  He  and  his  mother 
had  found  this  haven,  but  now  she  was  in 
the  hospital  undergoing  a  capital  opera- 


ONE  WOMAN  79 

tion.  Madame  was  trying  to  arrange  a 
special  diet  for  her  on  her  return.  They 
had  been  in  very  comfortable  circum- 
stances; now  everything  was  gone. 

And  so  it  was — the  same  story,  and 
from  all  parts  of  Belgium.  They  had 
come  from  Verviers,  Aerschot,  Dinant, 
from  Termonde  and  Ypres — the  striking 
thing  was  the  courage,  the  gentleness,  the 
fine  spirit  of  all. 

This  "Home,"  as  I  said,  has  now  been 
subsidized,  but  along  with  it  Madame  still 
carries  on  another  admirable  work  en- 
tirely on  her  own  responsibility.  Some 
friends  help  her,  but  she  really  lives  from 
day  to  day!  On  the  ground  floor  of  this 
same  building  she  has  a  restaurant,  also 
known  only  as  the  word  passes  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  where  any  one  may 
come  for  a  good  dinner  at  noon.  There 
is  no  limit  to  what  one  may  pay,  but  the 
charge  is  a  franc,  or  twenty  cents.  The 
majority  pay  less. 


80  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

It  has  quite  the  atmosphere  of  one  of 
the  little  Paris  restaurants  of  the  Latin 
quarter — two  adjoining  rooms  bright  with 
flowers  and  colored  cloths  and  gay  china, 
separated  from  the  kitchen  only  by 
screens.  It  is  frequented  chiefly  by 
artists  and  teachers,  some  young  girls 
from  the  shops,  and  a  few  business  men. 
Madame  does  not  go  from  table  to  table 
as  the  Paris  host  does,  greeting  his  guests, 
but  they  come  to  her  table  to  shake  hands 
and  chat  for  a  minute.  They  linger  over 
their  coffee — there  is  the  general  atmos- 
phere of  cheer  and  bien  etre.  And  what 
this  means  in  this  time  of  gloom  to  the 
sixty  or  more  who  gather  there  daily ! 

Young  girls  of  the  families  of  the  refu- 
gees serve  the  meals.  The  cook,  herself 
a  refugee,  works  for  twenty  francs  a 
month. 

I  said  any  one  might  come,  but  that  is, 
of  course,  not  exact.  Any  one  may  ask 
to  come,  but  he  must  prove  to  Madame 


ONE  WOMAN  81 

that  he  needs  to  come.  After  he  explains 
his  situation,  she  has  ways  of  checking  up 
this  information  and  deciding  herself 
whether  the  need  is  a  real  one.  The  din- 
ner consists  of  soup,  a  meat  and  vegeta- 
ble dish,  and  dessert,  with  beer  or  coffee. 
I  was  looking  over  the  meal  tickets  and 
noticed  that  while  most  of  them  were 
unstamped  (the  one  franc  ones)  a  good 
number  had  distinguishing  marks.  Then 
I  learned  that  if  a  person  was  unable  to 
pay  a  franc  for  this  meal,  he  might  have 
it  for  fifteen  or  even  ten  cents,  and  his 
ticket  was  stamped  accordingly.  I  found 
one  ticket  with  no  stamp,  but  with  the 
"o"  of  "No"  blotted  out.  This  might 
be  chance,  but  after  finding  a  half-dozen 
or  more  with  this  same  ink  blot,  I  sus- 
pected a  meaning.  And  the  explanation 
revealed  the  spirit  of  Madame's  work. 
"Yes,"  she  said,  "there  is  a  meaning. 
There  are  some  so  badly  off  that  they  can 
pay  nothing;  to  save  them  the  pain  of 


82  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

having  to  look  at,  and  to  have  others  look 
at,  a  stamp  registering  this  misery,  I  do 
not  stamp  their  tickets,  but,  since  I  must 
keep  count,  I  blot  that  little  'o,'  which 
at  once  suggests  'zero*  to  me!" 

Choosing  at  random,   I   found   regis- 
tered for  one  day  in  July,  1916: 
i  dinner  at  i  franc,  10  centimes. 

58  dinners  at  I  franc. 

43  dinners  at  75  centimes  (15  cents ). 

10  dinners  at  50  centimes. 
4  dinners  at  a 


IX 

THE   CITY   OF   THE   CARDINAL 

UNQUESTIONABLY  the  Belgian 
above  all  others  the  Germans  would 
rid  themselves  of  if  they  could,  is 
Cardinal  Mercier.  He  is  the  exalted 
Prince  of  the  Church,  but  in  the  hour  of 
decision,  he  stept  swiftly  down  and,  with 
a  ringing  call  to  courage,  took  his  place 
with  the  people.  Ever  since  that  day  he 
has  helped  them  to  stand  united,  defiant, 
waiting  the  day  of  liberation.  Others 
have  been  silenced  by  imprisonment  or 
death,  but  the  greatest  power  has  not 
dared  to  lay  hands  on  the  Cardinal.  He 
is  the  voice,  not  only  of  the  Church;  but 
of  Belgium  heartening  her  children. 
Malines  has  her  cantines  and  soupes 

83 


84  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

and  ouvroirs,  all  the  branches  of  secours 
necessary  to  a  city  that  was  one  of  the 
centers  of  attack;  but  these  are  not  the 
most  interesting  things  about  Malines. 
It  is  above  all  as  the  city  of  the  Cardinal 
that  she  stands  forth  in  this  war.  Her 
"ceuvre"  has  been  to  give  moral  and 
spiritual  secours,  not  only  to  her  own 
people,  but  to  those  of  every  part  of  Bel- 
gium. 

Since  under  the  "occupation"  the  press 
has  naturally  been  "controlled,"  this 
secours  has  been  distributed  chiefly 
through  the  famous  letters  of  the  Car- 
dinal sent  to  priests  to  be  re-read  to  their 
people.  We  remember  the  thrill  with 
which  the  first  one  was  read  in  America. 
After  the  war  there  will  be  pilgrimages 
to  the  little  room  where  it  was  printed. 
I  had  the  privilege  of  having  it  shown  me 
by  that  friend  of  the  Cardinal  who  was 
the  printer  of  the  first  letter,  and  whose 
brother  was  at  this  time  a  prisoner  in 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  CARDINAL      85 

Germany  for  having  printed  the  second. 
The  room  was  much  as  it  had  been  left 
after  the  search;  books  were  still  disar- 
ranged on  their  shelves,  papers  and 
pamphlets  heaped  in  confusion  on  the 
tables.  The  red  seals  with  which  the 
Germans  had  closed  the  keyholes  had 
been  broken,  but  their  edges  still  re- 
mained. Standing  in  the  midst  of  the 
disarray,  remembering  that  the  owner 
had  already  been  six  months  in  a  German 
prison,  and  looking  out  on  the  shattered 
f  ac.ade  at  the  end  of  the  garden,  I  realized, 
at  least  partly,  another  moment  of  the 
war. 

This  quickening  secours,  then,  is  dis- 
tributed chiefly  by  letter,  but  continually 
by  presence  and  speech  in  Malines  itself, 
and  occasionally  in  other  parts  of  the 
country.  On  the  2ist  of  July,  1916,  the 
anniversary  of  the  independence  of  Bel- 
gium, all  Brussels  knew  that  the  Cardinal 
was  coming  to  celebrate  high  mass  in 


86  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Sainte  Gudule.  The  mass  was  to  begin 
at  II  o'clock,  but  at  9.30  practically  every 
foot  of  standing-room  in  the  vast  cathe- 
dral was  taken.  In  the  dimness  a  great 
sea  of  people  waited  patiently,  silently, 
the  arrival  of  their  leader.  Occasionally 
a  whispered  question  or  rumor  flashed 
along  the  nave.  "He  has  come!"  "He 
has  been  prevented!"  There  was  a  tacit 
understanding  that  there  should  be  no 
demonstration — the  Cardinal  himself  had 
ordered  it.  Every  one  was  trying  to  con- 
trol himself,  and  yet,  as  the  air  grew 
thicker,  and  others  fought  their  way  into 
the  already  packed  transepts,  one  felt  that 
anything  might  happen!  Almost  every 
person  had  a  bit  of  green  ribbon  (color 
of  hope)  or  an  ivy  leaf  (symbol  of  en- 
durance) pinned  to  his  coat.  The  wear- 
ing of  the  national  colors  was  strictly  for- 
bidden, but  the  national  spirit  found 
another,  way:  green  swiftly  replaced  the 
orange,  black  and  red. 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  CARDINAL      87 

We  all  knew  that  this  meant  trouble 
for  Brussels,  and  the  fact  that  the  shops 
(which  had  all  been  ordered  to  keep  open 
this  holiday)  were  carrying  on  a  con- 
tinuous comedy  at  the  expense  of  the 
Germans,  did  not  help  matters.  Their 
doors  were  open,  to  be  sure,  but  in  many, 
the  passage  was  blocked  by  the  five  or 
six  employees  who  sat  in  stiff  rows  with 
bows  of  green  ribbon  in  their  buttonholes, 
and  indescribable  expressions  on  their 
faces.  In  the  biggest  chocolate  shop,  the 
window  display  was  an  old  pail  of  dirty 
water  with  a  slimsy  rag  thrown  near  it. 
There  was  no  person  inside  but  the  owner, 
who  stood  beside  the  cash  register  in 
dramatic  and  defiant  attitude,  smoking  a 
pipe.  There  were  crowds  in  front  of  the 
window  which  displayed  large  photo- 
graphs of  the  King  and  Queen,  draped 
with  the  American  flag.  Another  shop 
had  only  an  enormous  green  bow  in  the 
window.  Almost  every  one  took  some 


88  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

part  in  the  play.  Not  a  Belgian  entered 
a  shop,  and  if  a  German  was  brave  enough 
to,  he  was  usually  made  the  victim  of  his 
courage.  One  was  delighted  to  serve 
him,  but,  unfortunately,  peaches  had  ad- 
vanced to  ten  francs  each,  or  something 
of  the  sort! 

Finally,  after  an  hour  and  a  half,  a 
priest  made  an  announcement,  which 
from  our  distance  we  misunderstood.  We 
thought  he  said  that  the  mass  would  be 
celebrated,  but  unfortunately  not  by 
Monseigneur,  who  had  been  detained.  A 
few  of  us  worked  our  way,  inch  by  inch, 
to  the  transept  door,  and  out  into  the 
street.  There  I  found  an  excited  group 
running  around  the  rear  of  the  cathedral 
to  the  sacristy-door,  and,  when  I  reached 
it,  I  learned  the  Cardinal  had  just  passed 
through. 

For  no  particular  reason  I  waited  there, 
and  before  long  the  door  was  partly 
opened  by  an  acolyte,  who  was  apparently 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  CARDINAL      89 

expecting  some  one.  He  saw  me  and 
agreed  that  I  might  enter  if  I  wished,  for 
was  I  not  an  American  to  whom  all 
Belgium  is  open?  So  I  slipt  in  and 
found  room  to  stand  just  behind  the  altar 
screen  where  all  through  the  celebration 
I  could  watch  the  face  of  the  Cardinal — 
a  face  at  once  keen  and  tender,  strong, 
fearless,  devout:  one  could  read  it  all 
there.  He  was  tall,  thin,  dominating,  a 
heroic  figure,  in  his  gorgeous  scarlet  vest- 
ments, officiating  at  the  altar  of  this 
beautiful  Gothic  cathedral. 

The  congregation  remained  silent,  three 
or  four  fainting  women  were  carried  out, 
that  was  all.  Then  the  Cardinal  mounted 
the  pulpit  at  the  further  end  of  the  nave  to 
deliver  his  message,  the  same  message  he 
had  been  preaching  for  two  years — they 
must  hold  themselves  courageous,  uncon- 
quered,  with  stedfast  faith  in  God  and  in 
their  final  liberation.  Tears  were  in  the 
eyes  of  many,  but  there  was  no  crying  out. 


90  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

From  the  pulpit  he  came  back  to  the 
catafalque  erected  in  the  middle  of  the 
nave  for  the  Belgian  soldiers  dead  in 
battle.  It  represented  a  great  raised 
coffin,  simply  and  beautifully  draped  with 
Belgian  flags,  veiled  in  crepe.  Tall,  flam- 
ing candles  surrounded  it.  As  the  Car- 
dinal approached,  the  dignitaries  of  the 
city,  who  had  been  occupying  seats  of 
honor  below  the  altar,  marched  solemnly 
down  and  formed  a  circle  about  the 
catafalque.  Then  the  Cardinal  read  the 
service  for  the  dead.  The  dim  light  of 
the  cathedral,  the  sea  of  silent  people,  the 
memorial  coffin  under  the  flag  and  lighted 
by  tall  candles,  the  circle  of  those  chosen 
to  represent  the  city,  the  sad-faced  Cardi- 
nal saying  the  prayers  for  those  who  had 
died  in  defense  of  the  flag  that  now 
covered  them — was  it  strange  that  as  his 
voice  ceased  and  he  moved  slowly  toward 
the  sacristy-door  by  which  he  was  to  de- 
part, the  overwhelming  tide  of  emo- 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  CARDINAL      91 

tion  swept  barriers,  and  "Vive  le  Roi!" 
"Vive  Monseigneur !"  echoed  once  more 
from  these  ancient  walls!  We  held  our 
breath.  Men  were  pressing  by  me 
whispering,  "What  shall  we  do?  We 
have  necessity  to  cry  out — after  two 
years,  we  must  cry  out!"  The  Cardinal 
went  straight  forward,  looking  neither  to 
the  right  nor  the  left,  the  tears  streaming 
down  his  cheeks. 

Outside,  to  pass  from  the  rear  of  the 
cathedral  to  the  Archbishop's  palace,  he 
was  obliged  to  cross  the  road.  As  I 
turned  up  this  road  to  go  back  to  the 
main  portal,  the  crowd  came  surging 
down,  arms  outthrust,  running,  waving 
handkerchiefs  and  canes,  pushing  aside 
the  few  helpless  Belgian  police,  quite  be- 
yond control,  and  shouting  wildly  now, 
"Vive  le  Roi !"  and  "Vive  Monseigneur !" 
I  was  able  to  struggle  free  only  after  the 
gate  had  closed  on  the  Cardinal. 

This  was  the  day  when  in  times  of 


92  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

peace  all  the  populace  brought  wreaths 
to  the  foot  of  the  statue  erected  in  honor 
of  the  soldiers  who  died  for  the  inde- 
pendence of  Belgium.  The  Germans  had 
placed  guards  in  the  square  and  for- 
bidden any  one  to  go  near  it.  So  all  day 
long  throngs  of  people,  a  constant,  steady 
procession  marched  along  the  street 
beyond,  each  man  lifting  his  hat,  women 
often  their  green  parasols,  as  soon  as 
they  came  in  view  of  their  statue.  All 
these  things,  I  repeat,  did  not  help  Brus- 
sels in  the  matter  of  the  demonstration  at 
the  cathedral.  And  a  few  days  later  a 
posted  notice  informed  her  that  she  had 
been  fined  1,000,000  marks! 

But  the  people  had  seen  their  Cardinal 
— they  had  received  their  spiritual 
secours — he  had  brought  heavenly  com- 
fort to  their  hearts,  put  new  iron  in  their 
blood.  They  had  dared  to  cry  just  once 
their  loyalty  to  him  and  to  their  King, 
and  they  laughed  at  the  i  ,000,000  marks ! 


X 


THE   TEACHERS 

ONE   afternoon   I   happened   by   a 
communal     school     in     another 
crowded  quarter  of  Brussels,  and, 
tho  it  was  vacation,  and  I  knew  the  prin- 
cipal had  been  sadly  overworked  for  two 
years  and  ought  to  be  in  the  country,  I 
decided  to  knock  at  the  bureau  to  see  if 
he  were  in. 

I  had  my  answer  in  the  corridor,  where 
rows  of  unhappy  mothers  and  miserable 
fathers  were  waiting  to  see  him.  Inside 
there  were  more.  He  was  examining  a 
little  girl  with  a  very  bad  eye;  and  I 
realized  why  there  could  be  no  vacation 
for  the  principal! 

As  I  sat  there,  I  heard  the  noise  of 

93 


94  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

marching  in  the  court  below,  and  when  I 
asked  what  it  was,  he  opened  the  window 
for  me  to  see.  There  were  720  children 
between  six  and  fourteen  years,  gaily 
tramping  round  and  round  under  the 
trees,  making  their  "promenade"  before 
the  4  o'clock  "repas  scolaire"  (school 
children's  repast)  which  the  Relief  Or- 
ganization is  now  trying  to  furnish  to 
each  of  the  1,200,000  children  in  the  free 
schools  of  Belgium  who  may  need  it — 
incidentally  at  an  outlay  of  $2,500,000  a 
month. 

Over  8,500  children  in  the  sixty  com- 
munal schools  of  Brussels  proper  receive 
this  dinner.  It  is  quite  distinct  from  the 
eleven  o'clock  meal  furnished  at  the  can- 
tines  for  children  below  normal  health — 
they  may  have  both — and  it  is  served  in 
the  school  building.  Naturally  the  school- 
teachers are  carrying  a  large  share  in 
this  stupendous  undertaking. 

For  the  children,   the   "repas"   is  the 


THE  TEACHERS  95 

great  event  of  the  day,  and,  since  the 
vacation,  they  gather  long  before  the 
hour.  One  sees,  too,  hundreds  of  little 
ones  on  the  sidewalks  before  the  Enfants 
Debiles  dining-rooms,  as  early  as  8  A.M., 
clutching  their  precious  cards  and  waiting 
already  for  their  eleven  o'clock  potatoes 
and  phosphatine. 

This  school  is  also  a  communal  soup 
center,  tho  the  teachers  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  distribution.  Every  day 
from  2,500  to  3,000  men  and  women  line 
up — worn,  white  enamel  pitchers  in  one 
hand,  cards  in  the  other,  to  receive  the 
family  ration  of  soup  and  bread. 

As  I  passed  one  morning,  I  saw  a  little 
bare-legged  girl  sitting  on  a  doorstep  op- 
posite. Her  mother  had  evidently  left 
her  to  guard  their  portion,  and  she  sat 
huddled  up  against  the  tall,  battered 
pitcher  full  of  steaming  soup,  her  little 
arms  tight  about  four  round  loaves — 
which  meant  many  brothers  and  sisters. 


96  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

The  father  was  in  the  trenches.  She  sat 
there,  a  slim,  wistful  little  thing,  guard- 
ing the  soup  and  bread,  the  picture  of 
what  war  means  to  women  and  children. 

Monsieur  was  particularly  happy  be- 
cause he  had  just  succeeded  in  sending 
fifteen  children,  who  very  much  needed  to 
be  built  up,  to  the  seacoast  for  fifteen 
days.  It  is  his  hope  to  establish  homes, 
in  the  country  so  far  as  possible,  which 
shall  be  limited  to  from  thirty  to  forty 
children. 

He  has  continually  to  arrange,  too,  for 
the  care  of  those  who  may  not  be  in  truth 
orphans,  but  who  belong  to  the  thousands 
of  wretched  little  ones  set  adrift  by  the 
war.  I  saw  one  little  boy  who  had  been 
found  all  alone  in  a  most  pitiful  plight 
beside  a  gun,  in  one  of  the  devastated  dis- 
tricts. If  his  parents  are  still  living,  no 
one  has  yet  succeeded  in  tracing  them. 

That  morning  an  old  uncle  had  begged 
Monsieur  to  take  charge  of  his  nephew 


THE  TEACHERS  97 

and  niece;  he  had  not  a  penny  left,  they 
must  starve  unless  something  were  done 
for  them.  Some  months  before,  the  father 
had  been  wounded  at  the  front,  and  the 
mother  had  foolishly  hurried  away  to  try 
to  reach  him,  leaving  the  children  with 
her  brother.  Months  had  gone  by — he 
had  had  no  word  from  any  one — and 
now  he  was  quite  at  the  end  of  his  re- 
sources. And  so  it  was  with  case  after 
case.  Something  must  be  done! 

Besides  being  the  section  kitchen  and 
dining-room,  this  school  has  become  a 
social  center.  Every  Sunday  afternoon 
the  children  are  invited  to  gather  there 
to  have  a  good  time.  They  are  taught  to 
play  games,  each  is  given  a  bonbon,  a 
simple  sweet  of  some  sort — "nothing  of 
the  kind  to  encourage  luxury!"  They 
are  occupied,  happy,  and  kept  off  the 
streets  and  out  of  homes  made  miserable 
through  lack  of  employment. 

We  see,  then,  that  "every  day"  means 


98  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

literally  every  day,  and  we  realize  how 
arduous  is  the  task  of  the  thousands  o£ 
devoted  teachers  who  are  standing  be- 
tween the  war  and  those  who  would  other- 
wise be  its  yictims. 

And  as  they  tell  us  over  and  over  again 
that  the  one  thing  that  makes  them  able 
to  stand  is  their  confidence  in  the  love 
and  sympathy  of  the  United  States,  we 
begin  to  realize  our  responsibility.  It 
is  not  only  that  the  wheat  and  cloth 
are  essential,  the  encouragement  of 
the  presence  of  even  the  few  (forty 
to  fifty)  Americans  is  the  great  ne- 
cessity ! 

At  8.30  the  next  morning  I  visited  one 
of  the  "Jardins  d'Enfants" — schools  for 
children  between  two  and  a  half  and  six 
years  of  age.  There  were  the  teachers 
already  busy  in  that  new  department  of 
their  work — the  war-food  department; 
460  tiny  tots  were  being  given  their  first 
meal  of  the  day — a  cup  of  hot  cocoa,  and, 


THE  TEACHERS  99 

during  that  month,  a  little  white  bread 
bun.  No  American  can  understand  what 
this  single  piece  of  white  bread  means  to 
a  French  or  Belgian  child.  I  am  sure 
that  if  a  tempting  course  dinner  were  set 
at  one  side,  and  a  slice  of  white  bread  at 
the  other,  he  would  not  hesitate  to  choose 
the  bread.  It  is  white  bread  that  they  all 
beg  for,  tho  the  brown  war  bread  made 
from  flour  milled  at  82  per  cent,  is  really 
very  palatable,  and  superior  to  the  war 
bread  of  other  countries. 

A  sheaf  of  letters  sent  from  a  school  in 
Lille  to  thank  the  C.  R.  B.  director  for 
the  improved  brown  (not  nearly  white) 
bread  gave  me  my  first  impression  of  the 
all-importance  of  the  color  and  quality  of 
the  bread. 

Amelie  B.  wrote: 

"Before  May  5,  1915,  we  had  to  eat 
black  bread,  which  we  preferred  to  make 
into  flowers  of  all  sorts  as  souvenirs  of 
the  war!  But  after  that  date  we  have 


100  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

had  the  good,  light  bread — so  eatable. 
It  is  for  this  we  thank  you." 

Another  says: 

"Since  we  have  had  the  good  bread  the 
happiest  people  are  the  mothers,  who  be- 
fore had  to  let  their  "chers  petits"  suffer 
from  hunger,  because  their  delicate 
stomachs  would  not  digest  the  bad,  black 
bread." 

Further : 

"The  mothers  of  little  children  wept 
with  joy  and  blest  you,  as  they  went  to 
get  their  good,  light  bread." 

One  little  girl  wrote: 

"When  on  the  5th  of  May,  1915, 
maman  returned  with  the  new  bread, 
and  we  all  ran  to  taste  it,  we  found  it 
good.  The  bread  we  had  been  eating 
long  months  had  been  dark  and  moist. 
Further,  rice  had  been  our  daily  food.  It 
is  without  doubt  to  show  your  gratitude 
to  the  French,  who  went  to  drive  the 
English  away  from  you  in  1783,  that  you 


THE  TEACHERS  101 

have  thought  to  soften  our  suffering. 
Merci!  Merci!  Many  died  because  of 
that  bad  bread,  and  many  more  should 
have  died,  had  you  not  come  to  our  aid 
with  the  good  bread." 

Another  little  girl  writes: 

"If  ever  in  the  future  America  is  in 
need,  France  will  not  forget  the  good  she 
has  done  and  will  reach  a  hospitable  hand 
to  her  second  country,  who  has  saved  her 
unhappy  children.  It  is  you  who  have 
made  it  possible  for  all  mothers  to  give 
bread  to  their  children.  Without  the  rice 
and  beans,  what  would  have  become  of 
us !  You  have  helped  us  to  have  coal  and 
warm  clothing  against  the  cold.  In  the 
name  of  all  the  mothers  we  thank  you, 
and  all  the  little  children  send  you  a  great 
kiss  of  thanks." 

The  babies  had  all  finished  their  cocoa 
and  buns,  so  I  went  to  the  Girls'  Tech- 
nical Training  School  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. It  was  having  a  particularly  hard 


102  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

time  because  of  the  lack  of  materials  and 
of  opportunity  to  sell  the  articles  made 
by  the  children.  But  two  wonderful 
women — one  the  director,  the  other  the 
art  teacher — were  courageously  fighting 
to  keep  things  going. 

The  pupils  are  largely  from  poor  fami- 
lies. When  they  were  going  through  the 
beautiful  figures  of  their  gymnasium  ex- 
ercise for  me,  I  saw  that  the  bloomers 
were  mostly  made  of  odds  and  ends  of 
cloth.  The  shoes,  too,  quickly  told  the 
tale — all  sorts  of  substitutes  for  leather, 
patched  woolen  shoes  or  slippers,  wooden 
soles  with  cloth  tops,  clogs. 

In  the  room  for  design  I  was  greeted 
with  most  cordial  smiles  as  Madame  in- 
troduced me  as  her  friend  from  America, 
the  country  which  meant  hope  to  them. 
Then  happened  swiftly  one  of  the  things 
it  is  difficult  to  prevent — the  shouting  in 
one  breath  of  "Vive  le  Roi!"  and  "Vive 
I'Amerique!"  Who  would  doubt  that  a 


THE  TEACHERS  103 

good  part  of  the  joy  of  shouting  "Vive 
rAmerique"  comes  from  the  opportunity 
it  gives  them  to  couple  with  it  the  cry  of 
their  hearts,  "Vive  la  Belgique!" 

By  the  time  we  returned  to  her  bureau, 
Madame  trusted  me  entirely,  and  ex- 
plained that  this  was  the  center  of  a  kind 
of  "Assistance  Discrete"  she  had  estab- 
lished for  her  girls  and  their  families.  She 
opened  several  cabinets,  and  showed  me 
what  they  had  made  to  help  one  another. 
Certain  women  have  been  contributing 
materials — old  garments,  bits  of  cloth, 
trimming  for  hats,  all  of  which  have  been 
employed  to  extraordinary  advantage. 
What  struck  me  most  were  the  attractive 
little  babies'  shirts,  made  from  the  upper 
parts  of  worn  stockings. 

Madame  opened  a  paper  sack  and 
showed  me  nine  hard-boiled  eggs  that 
were  to  be  given  to  the  weaker  girls,  who 
most  needed  extra  nourishment  that  day. 

Her  most  precious   possession   was   a 


104  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

record  of  the  gifts  of  the  pupils  and  their 
friends  for  this  "Assistance  Discrete."  It 
is  a  list  of  contributions  of  a  few  centimes, 
or  a  franc  or  two,  given  as  thank  offer- 
ings for  some  blessing;  oftenest  for  re- 
covery from  illness,  or  for  good  news  re- 
ceived. It  showed,  too,  that  the  children 
had  been  bringing  all  the  potato  peelings 
from  home,  to  be  sold  as  food  for  cattle. 
Sometimes  a  girl  brought  as  much  as 
twenty-eight  centimes  (over  five  cents) 
worth  of  peelings.  But  in  May,  1916, 
the  potato  peelings  stopt — they  were  not 
having  potatoes  at  home. 


XI 

GABRIELLE'S    BABY 

BEFORE  the  war  Madame  was  very 
close  to  the  Queen.  She  lived  in 
our  quarter  of  Brussels ;  we  became 
friends.  And  how  generous  the  friend- 
ship between  a  Belgian  and  an  American 
can  be,  only  the  members  of  the  Commis- 
sion for  Relief  truly  know!  It  is  swift 
and  complete. 

I  had  been  in  Brussels  five  months 
when  she  said  to  me  one  day: 

"My  dear,  I  understand  only  too  well 
the  difficulties  of  your  position — the 
guaranty  you  gave  on  entering.  As 
you  know,  I  have  never  once  suggested 
that  you  carry  a  note  for  me,  or  bring  a 
message — tho  I  have  seen  you  starting  in 
your  car  behind  your  blessed  little  white 

105 


106  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

flag  for  the  city  of  my  daughter  and  my 
grandchildren !  Nor  have  I,"  she  laughed, 
with  the  swift  play  so  typical  of  the  Bel- 
gian mind,  "once  hinted  at  a  pound  of 
butter  or  a  potato!  But  lately  I  have 
been  suffering  so  many,  many  fears,  that 
I  am  tempted  just  to  ask  if  you  think  this 
would  be  wrong  for  you — if  it  would, 
forget  that  I  asked  it:  I  have  a  relation 
who  has  always  been  closer  to  me  than  a 
brother — we  were  brought  up  together. 
He  is  eighty-two  now,  and,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war,  was  living  near  X  in 
Occupied  France.  He  was  important  in 
his  district,  his  name  is  known.  Now,  if 
I  should  merely  give  you  that  name,  and, 
when  you  next  see  your  American  dele- 
gate from  that  district,  you  should  speak 
it,  might  it  not  be  possible  that  he  would 
recognize  it,  and  could  tell  you  if  my  dear, 
dear  M.  is  suffering,  or  if  he  is  yet  able 
to  care  for  himself  ?  Would  that  be  break- 
ing your  agreement?" 


GABRIELLE'S  BABY  107 

As  she  stood  there — intelligence,  dis- 
tinction speaking  from  all  her  person — 
fearfully  putting  this  pitiful  question,  I 
experienced  another  of  those  maddening 
moments  we  live  through  in  Belgium. 
One  swiftly  doubts  one's  reason — the 
situation — everything !  The  world  simply 
can  not  be  so  completely  lost  as  it  seems ! 

Mercifully  this  would  not  be  breaking 
any  promise ;  and  I  begged  for  the  name. 

But  even  then  I  was  rather  hopeless 
that  our  American  would  know.  In  the 
North  of  France  he  must  live  with  his 
German  officer;  he  is  not  free  to  mingle 
with  the  French  people. 

Thursday,  conference  day,  came, 
wfien  all  the  little  white  flags  rush  in 
from  their  provinces,  bringing  our 
splendid  American  men — their  faces 
stern,  strained,  but  with  that  beautiful 
light  in  them  that  testifies  they  are  giv- 
ing without  measure  the  best  they  have 
to  others. 


108  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Never  will  any  one,  who  has  experi- 
enced it,  forget  the  thrill  he  felt  when 
he  saw  those  fifteen  cars  with  their 
forty-two  men  rushing  up,  one  after  the 
other  to  66,  rue  des  Colonies,  nor  the 
line  of  them  all  day  on  the  curb  with 
their  fluttering  white  flags  carrying  the 
red  C.  R.  B. !  There  were  no  other  cars 
to  be  seen.  Each  person,  as  he  passed, 
knew  that  these  fifteen  white  flags 
meant  wheat  and  life  to  10,000,000 
people. 

As  I  stood  there  I  heard  a  band.  I 
looked  up  the  street  and  saw  the  Ger- 
man soldiers  goose-stepping  before  their 
guard  mount.  This  happens  every 
morning,  just  a  square  above  our  offices. 
The  white  flags  and  the  goose-step — 
they  pretty  much  sum  up  the  situation ! 

I  hurried  inside,  hoping  fervently  to 
hear  the  longed-for  answer,  as  I  put  the 
name  and  my  question. 

But  the  name  was  strange  to  $.,  he 


GABRIELLE'S  BABY  109 

could  tell  me  nothing,  tho  he  felt  sure 
that  by  keeping  his  ears  open  that  week, 
he  might  learn  something. 

How  often  through  those  days  I 
thought  of  these  two,  caught  in  this  war- 
night  of  separation.  For  two  and  a 
half  years  neither  had  been  able  to  call 
across  it  even  the  name  of  the  other. 
And  then  of  the  word  thrown  into  the 
night  with  hope  and  prayer! 

On  the  next  meeting  day,  as  he  hur- 
ried toward  me,  I  could  see  from  S.'s 
face  that  he  had  news.  "Yes,"  he  said 
eagerly,  "he  is  still  there,  he  draws  his 
ration — he  is  not  suffering  from  want, 
he  has  enough  left  to  pay  for  his  food. 
But  when  he  heard  that  somebody 
would  possibly  carry  this  news  to  his 
dearest  living  relation,  he  cried:  'Oh! 
Would  it  not  be  possible  to  do  just 
one  thing  more!  I  am  eighty-two; 
I  may  die  before  this  terrible  war  is 
ended.  In  pity  will  not  somebody  tell  me 


110  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

before  I  die  if  any  of  my  nieces  has  had 
a  little  baby,  or  if  any  one  of  them  is 
going  to  have  a  little  baby?' 

"And  now,"  S.  said,  "you  and  I 
know  that  if  the  Relief  stops,  we've  got  to 
find  out  for  that  poor  old  man  that  there 
is  a  baby!" 

And  I  went  about  it.  On  Thursday, 
when  he  rushed  over  to  me  I  could  call: 
"Yes,  there  is  one!  It's  Gabrielle's!  A 
little  girl,  five  months  old  and  doing 
beautifully!" 

"Hurrah!"  he  shouted,  and  hurried 
back  to  his  tons  and  calories. 

It  is  four  months  since  then,  and  I  do 
not  know  if  there  are  any  more  babies, 
or  if  that  old  gentleman  of  a  distin- 
guished house  has  had  any  other  than 
this  single  connection  with  the  loved  ones 
of  this  family  in  over  two  and  a  half 
years. 


XII 

THE   "DROP   OF   MILK" 

BELGIUM  is  succoring  her  weak 
children,  but  she  is  going  deeper 
than  this:  she  is  trying  to  prevent 
weak  children.  All  through  the  country 
there  are  cantines  where  an  expectant  or 
young  mother  without  means  may  receive 
free  a  daily  dinner,  consisting  usually  of  a 
thick  soup,  a  meat  or  egg  dish  with  vege- 
tables, a  dessert  with  lactogenized  cream, 
and  a  measure  of  milk.  Light  service, 
like  the  peeling  of  vegetables,  is  often  re- 
quired in  return.  The  mother  may  come 
as  early  as  three  months  before  the  birth 
of  her  child,  and  if  she  is  still  nursing  it, 
may  continue  nine  months  after  its  birth. 
About  7,000  mothers  are  receiving  this 
dinner,  and  6,000  more  come  to  the 
ill 


112  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

affiliated  consultation  cantines  for  advice. 

Of  course,  there  are  always  those  who 
can  not  nurse  their  children,  or  who  can 
carry  them  through  but  a  short  period, 
when  the  question  of  pasteurized  milk  be- 
comes all-important.  The  "Goutte  de 
Lait"  (drop  of  milk)  sections  meet  this 
problem  by  offering  the  necessary  feed- 
ings of  pure  milk.  The  mother  may  pay 
for  the  bottles,  and  have  them  delivered, 
or  she  may,  if  necessitous,  receive  them 
free  by  calling  or  sending  for  them. 

In  Antwerp,  where  this  work  has 
assumed  unusual  proportions,  a  big- 
hearted  president  of  the  Belgian  Provin- 
cial Committee  got  permission  to  pur- 
chase 100  cows  in  Holland  and  to  hold 
them  without  danger  of  requisition.  He 
installed  a  model  dairy  on  his  place,  and 
now  gives  all  the  baby  cantines  pure 
milk.  He  is  always  most  anxious  to  fin- 
ish his  arduous  day's  work  at  the  bureau, 
so  that  he  may  return  to  his  dairy,  ex- 


THE  "DROP  OF  MILK"  113 

amine  the  milk  tests,  and  review  his  fine 
herd.  One  of  his  daughters,  in  addition 
to  hours  spent  in  the  cantines,  takes  the 
entire  responsibility  of  the  management 
of  this  dairy.  Other  towns  are  less  for- 
tunate, and  mnst  struggle  continually  to 
get  the  milk  they  require.  There  is  a 
beautiful  development  of  the  work  of  a 
"Goutte  de  Lait"  in  Hasselt,  in  a  cantine 
occupying  part  of  a  maternity  hospital. 
There  they  have  an  admirable  equip- 
ment for  sterilization  and  pasteurization. 
At  7  o'clock  in  the  morning  I  found  the 
women  directors  already  busy  with  the 
preparation  of  the  milk.  Each  feed- 
ing has  its  separate  bottle,  and  may  be 
kept  sealed  till  the  baby  receives  it.  After 
seven  months,  white  phosphatine,  a 
mixture  of  the  flour  of  wheat,  rice  and 
corn,  with  salt,  sugar  and  phosphate  of 
lime,  is  furnished;  at  fourteen  months, 
cocoa  is  added,  and  after  two  years,  soup 
and  bread. 


114  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

I  happened  to  arrive  on  the  weekly 
weighing  day.  One  hundred  mothers 
were  gathered  in  a  large,  cheery  room, 
their  babies  in  their  arms,  many  of  them 
gay  in  the  pretty  bonnets  the  doctor's 
wife  had  made  for  those  who  had  the 
best  records.  They  passed,  a  few  at  a- 
time,  into  the  smaller  room  where  the 
doctor  and  his  wife  examined,  weighed, 
counseled,  while  two  assistants  regis- 
tered important  details;  the  three  young 
nurses  generally  aided  the  mothers  and 
their  chiefs. 

Then  I  was  shown  an  adjoining  room, 
where,  in  the  corners,  there  were  heaps 
of  little  white  balls  rolled  in  wax  paper. 
From  a  distance  they  looked  more  than 
anything  else  like  tiny  popcorn  balls. 
What  could  they  mean?  I  took  one  in 
my  hand  and  saw  that  they  meant  that 
the  most  precious  prize  that  can  be 
offered  a  Belgian  mother  to-day  is  a  tiny 
ball  of  white  lard!  With  the  more 


THE  "DROP  OF  MILK"  115 

ignorant,  this  prize-system  is  the  swiftest 
means  of  opening  the  way.  The  doctor 
laughed  as  he  recounted  his  struggle  with 
one  obstinate  woman,  who  argued  stoutly 
that  because  the  cow  is  a  great,  strong 
creature,  while  she  herself  is  but  small 
and  frail,  undoubtedly  its  milk  would  be 
infinitely  more  strengthening  to  her  child 
than  her  own!  Where  argument  failed, 
the  prize  convinced.  If  a  mother  can 
nurse  her  baby  but  neglects  to,  she  is 
forced  to  feed  it  regularly  before  some 
member  of  the  committee.  Nurses  visit 
all  the  homes  registered. 

The  attempt  is  being  made  everywhere 
to  induce  mothers  who  are  not  actually  m 
want,  to  enroll  in  these  cantines,  while 
paying  for  their  food,  that  they  may  have 
the  benefit  of  the  pure  milk  and  the  phy- 
sician's care.  The  "Relief"  is  not  count- 
ing the  cost  of  this  fundamental  work — 
the  baby  cantines  are  the  promise  of  the 
future.  They  are  already  closely  watch- 


116  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

ing  the  development  of  53,000  babies. 
The  educational  value  alone  can  not  be 
measured;  women  who  had  not  the  faint- 
est conception  of  the  simplest  laws  of 
hygiene  are  being  trained,  forced  to  learn, 
because  their  own  and  their  children's 
food  can  come  to  them  only  from  the 
hand  of  their  teacher.  While  the  war  has 
brought  unutterable  misery,  it  has  also 
brought  extraordinary  opportunity,  and 
Belgium  is  seizing  this  opportunity  wher- 
ever she  can. 


XIII 

LAYETTES 

AND  babies  must  be  clothed,  as  well 
as  fed !  I  visited  one  of  the  Brus- 
sels layette  centers  with  the  C.  R. 
B.  American  advisory  physician,  whose 
interest  in  children  had  brought  him  at 
once  face  to  face  with  what  women  are 
doing  to  save  them.  We  went  to  a  little 
cantine  consisting  of  a  room  and  ante- 
room on  the  ground  floor,  and,  I  might 
add,  the  sidewalk — for  before  we  reached 
it  we  saw  the  line  of  hatless  mothers  with 
their  tiny  babies  wrapt  in  shawls  in  their 
arms,  waiting  their  turn.  This  was  a 
depot  where  they  might  receive  the 
articles  for  the  lying-in  period  and  cloth- 
ing for  babies  under  six  months  of  age. 
We  passed  through  the  anteroom,  where 

117 


118  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

a  number  sat  nursing  their  babies  (young 
mothers  mostly,  and  many  of  them 
pretty,  into  the  distributing-room. 

Here  we  found  three  directors  very 
busy  at  their  tables  with  the  record-cards, 
books  and  other  materials  of  their  organi- 
zation, and  three  younger  women  rapidly 
sorting  out  the  tiny  bibs,  slips  and  sheets 
heaped  high  on  the  counters  along  the 
walls.  From  the  miscellaneous  piles 
they  produced  the  neat  little  layettes — 
each  a  complete  wardrobe  for  an  ex- 
pectant or  young  mother,  and  compris- 
ing 4  squares,  2  swaddling  cloths,  3 
fichus,  4  brassieres,  2  shirts,  2  bands,  2 
pair  socks,  2  bonnets,  3  bibs,  i  hooded 
cloak.  The  packages  for  children  from 
three  to  six  months  held  3  squares,  2 
pantaloons,  2  bibs,  2  fichus,  2  shirts,  2 
brassieres,  2  dresses. 

As  the  mothers  came  in,  the  babies 
were  carefully  weighed  and  examined, 
the  records  added  to,  through  direct, 


LAYETTES  119 

effective  questioning — always  gentle  and 
encouraging.  The  young  women  turned 
over  the  needed  garments,  with  advice 
about  their  use,  chiefly  regarding  cleanli- 
ness. To  support  this  advice,  they  at- 
tempted to  have  the  materials  white  as 
far  as  possible. 

iWhen  I  asked  what  they  most  needed, 
they  said,  "Cradles,  Madame,  cradles. 
We  could  place  fifty  a  week  in  this  can- 
tine  alone,  and  white  materials  for  sheets 
and  blankets — and  oh,  hundreds  of  yards 
of  rubber  sheeting  or  its  equivalent!" 
For  very  evident  reasons,  the  C.  R.  B.  is 
not  allowed  to  bring  in  rubber  materials 
of  any  kind.  Many  mothers,  as  the  babies 
arrive,  appeal  for  beds  for  the  older  chil- 
dren and  for  mattresses  for  themselves. 
"We  can  still  get  ticking  in  Brussels  if 
we  have  the  money,  but  nothing  to  stuff  it 
with." 

Every  morning  since  the  beginning  of 
the  war  these  women  have  been  there,  on 


120  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

their  feet  most  of  the  time — sorting,  ar- 
ranging packages  of  garments,  and  keep- 
ing in  their  minds  and  hearts  the  hun- 
dreds of  mothers  and  babies  who  depend 
on  .them.  They  often  visit  the  homes 
after  cantine  hours.  Madame  smiled  as 
she  explained  the  necessity  of  a  personal 
investigation  of  each  case.  "For  in- 
stance," she  said,  "if  at  the  children's 
cantine  I  gave  a  youngster  a  pair  of  shoes 
simply  because  he  seemed  to  have  none, 
and  without  personally  proving  that  he 
had  none,  I  should  undoubtedly  have  an 
entire  barefoot  family  the  next  day!" 

It  was  with  this  particular  kind  of  work 
that  the  Petites  Abeilles  or  "Little  Bees" 
started  five  years  before  the  war.  A  group 
of  young  women  banded  together  to  help 
children,  and  organized  centers  in  Brus- 
sels for  the  distribution  of  needed  cloth- 
ing. Their  efforts  at  once  won  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  people.  Poets  wrote 
songs  to  "The  Little  Bees,"  the  Queen 


LAYETTES  121 

and  the  adored  Princess  Marie- Jose  were 
their  patronesses — they  were  probably  the 
most  popular  organization  of  their  kind  in 
Belgium. 

Then  the  war  came,  and  the  mothers 
quickly  took  charge.  They  established  a 
vast  home  for  refugees,  where  they 
housed  over  5,000.  Later  they  appealed 
to  the  Relief  Committee  to  be  allowed  to 
develop  their  work  to  meet  the  terrible 
emergency.  Their  offer  was  only  too 
gladly  accepted,  and  one  after  another 
cantine  for  feeding,  as  well  as  clothing, 
was  opened  in  the  various  sections  of  the 
city ;  where  to-day  practically  all  the  work 
for  the  children  is  carried  on  by  these 
wonderful  "Little  Bees"  and  their 
mothers.  By  July,  1916,  their  124  Brussels 
sections  were  caring  for  about  25,000 
children,  and  between  2,500  and  3,000 
women  were  giving  a  great  part  of  their 
time  to  the  work.  Social  barriers  disap- 
peared. All  classes  rallied  to  the  need. 


WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Four  hundred  telephone  girls  out  of  work 
were  doing  their  best,  side  by  side  with 
countesses. 

As  we  were  leaving,  Madame  explained 
that  the  woman  who  founded  this  par- 
ticular cantine  was  a  prisoner  in  Ger- 
many. The  three  beautiful  young  girls 
sorting  the  layettes  were  the  daughters, 
carrying  forward  their  mother's  work. 
I  was  to  learn  that  almost  invariably  at 
some  moment  of  my  visit,  the  veil  would 
be  withdrawn  and  the  tragedy  revealed. 


XIV 

THE   SKATING-RINK  &T  LIEGE 

TO  the  world  Liege  is  the  symbol  of 
Belgium's  courage.  During  eleven 
days  her  forts  withheld  an  over- 
whelming force,  reckless  of  its  size  or  her 
own  unpreparedness,  determined  to  save 
the  national  integrity  of  Belgium.  And 
well  Belgium  knew  to  what  point  she 
could  count  on  the  brave  Liegeois; 
through  all  her  troubled  history,  they  had 
been  the  ardent  champions  of  her  free- 
dom. 

This  beautiful  city  on  the  Meuse  es- 
caped the  ruin  visited  on  other  parts  of 
her  province.  In  fact,  all  the  four  largest 
cities  of  Belgium  escaped,  in  each  case  a 
smaller  neighboring  town,  especially  pic- 
turesque, stands  as  an  example  of  de- 

123 


WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

struction  and  warning.  Belgians  ask  if 
it  was  not  with  the  obvious  intent  of  cow- 
ing the  nearby  capital,  that  Dinant  was 
made  an  example  to  Namur,  Nimy  to 
Mons,  Louvain  to  Brussels?  They  point 
out  that  tho  only  the  ghost  of  lovely 
Visee  remains,  Liege  itself  has  lost  but 
about  100  buildings.  After  the  final  in- 
evitable surrender  of  her  forts,  the  at- 
tacking army  passed  on,  leaving  her  un- 
der powerful  control.  But  tho  the 
material  damage  was  small,  as  the  popu- 
lous center  of  a  great  industrial  region, 
this  city  was  one  of  the  first  to  realize  the 
distress  that  followed  the  occupation  and 
isolation  of  Belgium.  One  by  one  her 
famous  firearm  factories  and  glass  mills 
closed  their  doors,  and  poured  their  thou- 
sands of  workmen  into  the  streets.  In 
many  cases  the  factories  were  dismantled, 
the  machinery  taken  to  Germany  to  make 
munitions.  And  this  was  happening  all 
through  the  province,  so  that  by  1915  it 


counted  90,000  idle  workmen  (chomeurs), 
and  in  the  capital  alone,  fully  18,000. 
Ordinarily  (among  her  180,000  inhabit- 
ants) Liege  lists  43,000  skilled  workmen; 
so  for  her  the  proportion  of  idle  was  al- 
most one-half;  with  their  families  they 
represented  but  little  less  than  one-quarter 
of  the  entire  population.  The  4,000  em- 
ployed in  the  coal  mines,  which,  for- 
tunately, were  able  to  keep  open,  were 
the  one  saving  factor  in  the  situation. 

The  question  of  chomage,  or  unem- 
ployment, is  the  most  serious  the  relief 
organization  has  had  to  face.  It  has 
been  most  acute  in  the  two  Flanders;  but 
in  Antwerp,  with  its  25,000  idle  dock 
hands,  in  the  highly  industrial  Hainault, 
in  Namur  and  Brabant,  as  well  as  in 
Liege,  there  have  been  special  circum- 
stances developing  particular  difficulties. 
Over  665,000  workmen  without  work, 
representing  millions  of  dependents,  would 
present  a  sufficiently  critical  problem  to 


126  WOMEN  OF.  BELGIUM 

a  country  not  at  war.  One  can  imagine 
what  it  means  to  a  country  every  square 
foot  of  which  is  controlled  by  an  enemy 
so  hated  that  the  conquered  would  risk 
all  the  evils  of  continued  non-employment 
rather  than  have  any  of  its  people  serve 
in  any  way  the  ends  of  the  invader.  Bet- 
ter roads,  better  railways,  mean  greater 
facility  for  the  Germans. 

None  of  the  leaders  I  have  talked  with 
have  been  satisfied  with  the  system 
evolved,  but  no  one  has  yet  been  able  to 
substitute  a  better. 

A  scheduled  money  allowance  for  the 
chomeur  was  quickly  adopted,  but  as  a 
friend  from  Tournai  said,  this  enabled  a 
man  simply  to  escape  complete  starva- 
tion, but  not  to  live.  Three  francs  a  week 
for  the  workman,  one  franc  and  a  half  for 
his  wife,  fifty  centimes  for  each  of  his 
children,  or  one  dollar  and  ten  cents  a 
week  for  a  family  of  four,  just  about  the 
war  price  of  one  pound  of  butter  or  meat ! 


THE  SKATING-RINK  AT  LIEGE     127 

Obviously  the  chomeur  and  his  family 
must  draw  on  the  soupes  and  cantines, 
and  this  they  do.  They  form  a  consider- 
able part  of  the  one  and  one-quarter  mil- 
lions of  the  soup-lines.  Every  province 
has  tried  to  reduce  its  number  of  unem- 
ployed by  providing  a  certain  amount  of 
work  on  roads  and  public  utilities. 
Luxembourg  has  been  conspicuous  in  this 
attempt,  reclaiming  swamps,  rebuilding 
sewer  systems  and  roadways,  employing 
about  10,000  men.  In  fact,  Luxembourg 
has  so  fan  almost  avoided  a  chomeur 
class. 

Throughout  the  country,  too,  the  cloth- 
ing and  lace  committees  are  furnishing 
at  least  partial  employment  to  women. 
In  a  lesser  way  various  local  relief  com- 
mittees are  most  ingenious  in  inventing 
opportunities  to  give  work.  In  the  face 
of  the  whole  big  problem  they  often  seem 
insignificant,  but  every  community  is 
heartened  by  even  the  smallest  attempt  to 


128  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

restore  industry.  I  have  seen  fifty  men 
given  the  chance  to  buy  their  own  food 
by  means  of  a  "soles  work."  All  the 
needy  of  the  village  were  invited  to  bring 
their  worn  shoes  to  have  a  new  kind  of 
wooden  sole  put  on  for  the  winter,  and 
the  men  were  paid  by  the  committee  for 
putting  them  on.  In  one  city  the  owner 
of  a  closed  firearm  factory  has  opened  a 
toy  works  where  100  men  and  30  women 
are  kept  busy  carving  little  steel  boxes 
and  other  toys.  If  these  articles  could  be 
exported,  such  establishments  would 
quickly  multiply,  but  every  enterprize 
must  halt  at  the  grim  barrier. 

In  Liege  I  came  upon  a  most  pic- 
turesque attempt  at  an  individual  solu- 
tion. I  had  been  much  interested  in  Ant- 
werp and  Charleroi  and  other  cities,  in 
the  "Diner  Economique"  or  "Diner  Bour- 
geois," conducted  by  philanthropic 
women.  These  are  big,  popular  restau- 
rants, where  because  of  a  subsidy  from 


THE  SKATING-RINK  AT  LIEGE     129 

the  relief  committee,  and  because  almost 
all  of  the  service  is  contributed,  a  meal 
can  be  served  for  less  than  it  costs.  For 
a  few  centimes,  about  ten  cents,  usually, 
one  may  have  a  good  soup,  a  plate  with 
meat  and  yegetables,  and  sometimes  a 
dessert. 

Wonderful  Belgian  women  come  day 
after  day,  month  after  month,  to  serve 
the  thousands  that  flock  to  these  centers 
that  save  them  from  the  soup-lines.  If 
they  can  add  this  dinner  to  their  relief 
ration,  they  can  live.  And  they  are  not 
"accepting  charity!"  The  dining-rooms 
are  always  attractive,  often  bright  with 
flags  and  flowers,  the  women  are  cheery 
in  their  service.  Priests,  children,  artists, 
men  and  women  of  every  class  sit  at  the 
tables.  Once  I  saw  a  poor  mother  buy 
one  dinner  for  herself  and  her  two  chil- 
dren, and  fortunately,  too,  I  saw  a  swift 
hand  slip  extra  portions  in  front  of  the 
little  ones.  There  are  ten  such  restau- 


130  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

rants  in  Antwerp  (five  conducted  by  the 
Catholics,  and  five  by  the  Liberals)  that 
serve  on  an  average  over  10,000  dinners 
a  day.  The  one  in  Charleroi  serves  from 
400  to  900  daily. 

In  Liege  the  work  is  consolidated.  I 
found  the  once  popular  skating-rink 
turned  into  a  mighty  restaurant,  gay  with 
American  bunting.  The  skating  floor 
was  crowded  with  tables,  the  surround- 
ing spectators'  space  made  convenient 
cloak-rooms,  the  one-time  casual  buffet 
was  a  kitchen  in  deadly  earnest,  supply- 
ing dinners  to  about  4,000  daily. 

When  I  arrived,  there  was  already  a 
line  outside;  each  person  had  to  present 
a  card  on  entering  to  prove  him  a  citizen 
of  Liege.  If  he  could,  he  paid  75  centimes 
(15  cents)  for  his  dinner.  If  unable  to, 
by  presenting  a  special  card  from  the  Re- 
lief Committee,  he  might  receive  it  for 
60,  or  even  30  centimes — a  little  more 
than  5  cents. 


THE  SKATING-RINK  AT  LIEGE     131 

Inside  the  tables  were  crowded,  sixty- 
five  women  were  hurrying  between  them 
and  back  and  forth  to  the  directors  who 
stood  at  a  long  counter  in  front  of  the 
kitchen,  serving  the  thousands  of  por- 
tions, of  soup,  sausage,  and  a  kind  of 
stew  of  rice  and  vegetables. 

In  the  kitchen  and  meat  and  vegetable 
rooms  there  was  the  constant  clamor  of 
sifting,  cutting,  stirring,  of  the  opening 
and  shutting  of  ovens.  While  the 
sausages  of  the  day  were  being  hurried 
from  the  pans,  the  soup  of  the  morrow 
was  being  mixed  in  the  great  caldrons; 
250  men  were  hard  at  work.  Somehow 
they  did  not  look  as  tho  they  had  been 
peeling  carrots  and  stirring  soup  all  their 
lives — there  was  an  inspiring  dash  in 
their  movements  that  prevented  it  seem- 
ing habitual. 

The  superintendent  laughed :  "Yes," 
he  said,  "they  are  chiefly  railroad  engi- 
neers, conductors,  various  workmen  of 


WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

the  Liege  Railroad  Company!  I  myself 
was  an  attorney  for  the  road,  and  I  am 
really  more  interested  in  this  ceuvre  from 
the  point  of  yiew  of  these  men,  than  be- 
cause of  the  general  public  it  helps.  Here 
are  250  men  who  are  giving  their  best 
service  to  their  country.  In  working  for 
others  they  have  escaped  the  curse  of 
being  forced  to  work  for  the  Germans! 
The  sixty-five  women  serving  the 
4,000  were  once  in  the  telephone  service. 
They  also  offered  to  devote  themselves  to 
their  fellow-sufferers,  and  they  are  so 
proud,  so  happy  to  be  able  to  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  other  women  in 
this  black  hour." 

I  asked  if  each  worker  were  given  his 
dinner.  "Ah!  there  was  a  problem!"  he 
said.  "The  meals  which  we  furnish  for 
from  30  to  75  centimes,  cost  us  an  aver- 
age of  63  centimes."  To  supply  this  to 
250  assistants  was  quite  beyond  the  sub- 
sidy allowed  the  Relief.  And  yet  the 


THE  SKATING-RINK  AT  LIEGE     133 

workers  certainly  must  be  fed.  Finally  he 
admitted  that  he  and  a  group  of  friends 
were  contributing  the  money  necessary  to 
supply  these  meals.  He  added  that  in  the 
beginning  the  men  were  hardly  able  to 
give  more  than  two  hours'  hard  work  a 
day,  but  that  after  a  few  months  of 
proper  nourishment  their  energy  was  in- 
exhaustible. 

On  another  day  I  found  there  were  no 
potatoes,  and  that  the  number  of  meals 
served  had  in  consequence  dropt  fully 
1,000;  743  at  75  centimes,  820  at  60 
centimes,  1,473  at  30  centimes.  If  there 
are  no  potatoes  to  be  had  in  the  city,  and 
they  are  known  to  be  on  the  carte  of  the 
restaurant,  there  is  not  standing-room. 
Hundreds  have  to  be  turned  away. 

This  kind  of  double  ceuvre  is  quite 
the  most  interesting  of  all  the  varied  at- 
tempts to  meet  the  staggering  problem 
Belgium  has  daily  to  face. 


XV 

A1  ZEPPELIN 

1WENT  down  the  road  toward  Ver- 
viers.    I  stopt  at  a  farmhouse  to  talk 
with  the  farmer  about  the  pitiful  ration 
of  the  Liege  coal  miners.     They  travel 
many  miles  underground,  and  there  is  no 
way  of  getting  hot  soup  to  them.    His  wife 
gave  me  a  glass  of  sweet  milk.     Then 
we  went  into  the  courtyard  where  he  had 
a  great  caldron  of  prune  syrup  simmer- 
ing. 

Tfie  summer  had  been  wet  and  gray, 
but  September  was  doing  her  best  to 
make  up  for  it.  Suddenly  I  heard  the 
soft  whirr-whirr  of  a  Zeppelin.  I  ran 
out  into  the  road.  The  farmer  left  his 
prunes  to  Join  me.  We  watched  the 

134 


A  ZEPPELIN  135 

great  strange  thing  gliding  through  the 
sunshine.  It  was  flying  so  low  that  we 
could  easily  distinguish  the  fins,  the 
gondolas,  the  propellers.  It  looked  more 
than  anything  else  like  a  gigantic,  un- 
earthly model  for  the  little  Japanese 
stuffed  fishes  I  had  often  seen  in  the 
toy  shops.  Its  blunt  nose  seemed  shining 
white,  the  rest  a  soft  gray.  The  effect  of 
the  soothing  whirring  and  its  slow  glid- 
ing through  the  air  was  indescribable; 
that  it  could  be  anything  but  a  gentle 
messenger  of  peace  was  unbelievable. 
"Ah,  Madame,"  said  my  companion, 
"four  years  ago  L  saw  my  first  Zeppelin! 
It  seemed  a  beautiful  vision  from  another 
world,  like  something  new  in  my  re- 
ligion. We  all  stood  breathless,  praying 
for  the  safety  of  this  wonderful  new 
being;  praying  that  the  brave  men  who 
conducted  it  might  be  spared  to  the 
world.  And  to-day,  Madame,  may  it  be 
blown  to  atoms ;  if  necessary  may  its  men 


136  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

be  cut  to  bits;  may  they  be  burned  to 
ashes — anything — anything !  With  an  un- 
dying hate  I  swear  it  shall  be  destroyed! 
Madame,  that  is  what  war  does  to  a  man ! 
War,  Madame,  is  a  horrible  thing!" 


XVI 

NEW   USES   OF  ~A   HIPPODROME 

THE  cereal  and  fat  reserves  are 
divided  between  Rotterdam,  the 
mills,  warehouses  and  moving 
lighters  in  Belgium  and  Northern 
France,  so  that  one  can  never  see  the 
dramatic  heaping  up  in  one  place  of  the 
grain  that  is  to  feed  10,000,000  for  six 
days,  or  months.  But  the  greater  part 
of  the  clothing  reserves  are  held  in  the 
one  city  of  Brussels.  Their  housing  fur- 
nishes another  of  the  bewildering  con- 
trasts wrought  by  the  war;  what  was 
two  years  ago  a  huge,  thrilling  Hippo- 
drome is  now  rilled  with  the  silent  ranks 
of  bolts  of  cotton  and  flannel.  And  not 

137 


138  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

far  away,  the  once  popular  skating-rink 
is  piled  to  the  ceiling  with  finished  gar- 
ments; stage  boxes,  galleries,  dressing- 
rooms,  stairways — all  are  heaped  with 
cases  and  stacked  with  racks.  The  ceil- 
ing is  the  only  part  of  the  edifice  still 
visible;  along  the  rear  wall,  for  instance, 
runs  a  big  sign,  "Garments  for  Babies," 
and  they  mount  to  the  skylights.  Stocks 
are  accumulating  in  both  these  build- 
ings and  other  sub-centers  during  the 
summer,  and  in  the  autumn  the  work 
of  distribution  against  the  approaching 
winter  begins,  October  ist  registering 
the  high-water  mark  of  assets.  At  that 
time  there  were  three  and  a  half  million 
pieces,  yards  and  pairs,  on  the  shelves 
of  the  Hippodrome,  and  already  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  garments  assem- 
bled in  the  skating-rink. 

The  Rink  is  not  more  than  a  few  yards 
and  minutes  from  the  Hippodrome,  but 
a  bolt  of  flannel  may  travel  many  miles 


NEW  USES  OF  A  HIPPODROME     139 

and  occupy  several  weeks  in  going  from 
one  to  the  other.  That  journey  explains 
the  marvelous  development  of  the  cloth- 
ing organization.  One  may  go  even 
further,  and  trace  the  cloth  from  the 
donor  in  America,  to  the  recipient  in 
Mons  or  Tournai!  In  fact,  I  once 
thought  I  recognized  a  finished  blouse, 
as  plaid  flannel  contributed  in  San 
Francisco.  I  may  have  been  mistaken, 
but  I  let  my  mind  follow  that  flannel 
from  the  hand  of  the  little  school- 
teacher on  the  Pacific,  to  the  unhappy 
mother  in  Tournai ! 

For  when  the  C.  R.  B.  sent  out  a  call 
for  new  clothing  materials  in  January, 
1916,  somehow  it  reached  a  weather- 
beaten  school-house  on  a  lonely  stretch 
of  coast  30  miles  south  of  San  Fran- 
cisco. The  teacher  hurriedly  got  to- 
gether some  wool,  and  began  showing 
her  eight  pupils  (they  Happened  all  to 
be  boys),  how  to  knit  caps  for  other 


140  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

boys  of  their  own  size.  Their  few  families 
gathered  what  they  could,  and  on  her 
first  free  Saturday,  the  teacher  started 
in  an  open  buggy  in  the  rain  for  the 
C.  R.  B.  Bureau  in  San  Francisco.  This 
meant  30  miles  over  wretched  roads,  up 
hill  and  down,  with  her  precious  box. 
When  we  opened  it  we  found  eight 
knitted  caps,  one  small  sack  of  rice,  one 
pair  of  fur-lined  gloves,  a  bag  of  beans, 
a  lady's  belt,  plaid  flannel  for  a  blouse, 
and  40  cents  for  eight  five-cent  stamps 
for  the  letters  the  boys  hoped  to  receive 
in  answer  to  those  they  had  carefully 
tucked  inside  the  caps.  They  did  not 
know  that  our  orders  were  to  remove 
all  writing  from  all  gifts,  tho  once  in  a 
while  a  line  did  slip  in.  I  saw  a  touch- 
ing example  of  what  these  slips  meant 
when  I  was  leaving  Brussels.  A  group 
of  women  came  to  me  to  say,  "Madame, 
we  hear  you  are  going  to  California — 
is  it  true?  And,  if  you  are,  may  we  not 


NEW  USES  OF  A  HIPPODROME     141 

send  a  message  of  just  a  single  word  by 
you  ?  Will  you  not  tell  Margery  Marshall, 
of  Saratoga,  that  the  pretty  dress  she 
sent  over  a  year  ago,  made  a  little  girl, 
oh,  so  happy!  She  has  waited  all  these 
long  months  hoping  to  find  a  way  to 
thank  Margery — and  we  want  to  thank 
Margery.  Will  you  tell  her?" 

These  offerings  then  were  freighted 
to  New  York  with  the  month's  contribu- 
tions, and  there  consigned  to  a  C.  R.  B. 
ship,  starting  for  Rotterdam.  In  Rot- 
terdam they  were  unloaded  into  the 
enormous  C.  R.  B.  clothing  warehouse, 
a  corrugated  zinc  structure  as  big  as  a 
city  block.  After  the  examinations, 
valuings  and  listings,  they  were  re- 
loaded on  to  one  of  the  C.  R.  B.  barges 
that  ply  the  canals  constantly,  and 
finally  deposited  for  the  Comite  Na- 
tional in  the  Hippodrome  at  Brussels. 
There  the  women's  work  began — in  fact, 
to  one  woman  especially  is  due  the  credit 


WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

for  the  completeness  of  the  organization 
of  this  clothing  department. 

On  a  certain  day  the  flannel  for  the 
blouse  was  piled  into  a  big  gray  truck 
and  hauled  across  the  city  to  one  of  the 
most  interesting  places  in  Brussels. 
This  is  at  once  the  central  workroom 
for  the  capital,  and  the  pattern  and 
model  department  for  all  Belgium. 
Madame  . . .  has  500  women  and  men 
working  continually,  to  prepare  the 
bundles  of  cut  garments  that  go  out  to 
the  sub-sections  and  homes  in  Brussels. 
If  the  seamstresses  have  children  they 
may  receive  one  bundle  of  sewing  a 
week;  if  not,  but  one  in  a  fortnight.  In 
the  ouvroir  itself  the  work  is  divided  be- 
tween shifts  who  are  allowed  to  come 
for  a  fortnight  each.  This  is,  of  course, 
the  great  sorrow  of  the  committees.  If 
only  there  were  enough  work  to  give  all 
the  time  to  those  whose  sole  appeal  is 
that  they  be  allowed  to  earn  their  soup 


NEW  USES  OF  A  HIPPODROME     143 

and  bread!  But  every  hour's  work  en- 
courages somebody,  and  the  opportuni- 
ties are  distributed  just  as  widely  as 
possible.  In  this  way  about  25,000  are 
reached  in  Greater  Brussels  alone. 

The  business  of  preparing  these  little 
packages  of  cut-out  blouses  and  trousers 
and  bibs  is  amazing.  The  placing  of 
patterns  to  save  cloth  in  the  cutting  is 
the  first  consideration ;  the  counting  off 
of  the  buttons,  tapes,  hooks  and  neces- 
sary furnishings  for  millions  of  gar- 
ments— can  we  conceive  the  tediousness 
of  this  task?  Instructions  must  be  care- 
fully marked  on  a  card  that  is  tied  across 
the  top  of  the  completed  bundle,  every- 
thing being  made  as  simple  for  the  sewer 
as  possible.  They  travel  from  one  coun- 
ter to  another,  from  one  room  to  the 
next,  even  up  and  down  stairs,  be- 
fore compact,  neat  and  complete,  they 
are  finally  registered  and  ready  to 
go  to  the  waiting  women,  who  will 


144  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

make  them  into  the  skirts  or  baby  slips 
or  men's  shirts  or  suits  that  the  relief 
committees  will  distribute. 

That  is  the  Brussels  side  of  the  work; 
the  national  side  appears  in  the  pattern 
and  model  department.  Madame  has 
developed  this  to  an  extraordinary  de- 
gree. Here  dozens  of  people  are  bend- 
ing over  counters,  folding,  measuring, 
cutting  heavy  brown  paper  into  shapes 
for  every  particular  article  that  is  to  be 
given  to  every  particular  man,  baby  and 
woman  in  Belgium.  There  are  patterns 
for  children  of  every  age,  and  for  grown- 
ups, of  every  width  and  length — hundreds 
of  patterns  for  all  the  workrooms  in  all 
the  provinces.  Then  there  are  sample 
picture-charts  showing  how  the  patterns 
must  be  placed  for  the  most  advantage- 
ous cutting.  Along  with  every  type  of 
pattern  goes  one  finished  model  for  exhi- 
bition in  the  workroom.  In  the  models 
the  women  may  see  just  how  the  little 


NEW  USES  OF  A  HIPPODROME     145 

bundles  that  started  originally  from  the 
Hippodrome  should  look,  when  they  are 
shipped  back  as  garments  to  the  Rink. 

And  it  was  for  one  of  these  models  for 
a  blouse  that  the  school-teacher's  plaid 
was  used!  As  sample  blouse  it  traveled 
from  the  Brussels  pattern  center  to 
an  ouvroir  in  the  Southern  Hainaut: 
it  hung  in  a  workroom  in  Mons! 
After  hundreds  of  blouses  had  been 
copied  from  it  and  distributed  in  the 
province,  the  pattern  department  de- 
cided to  change  the  blouse  model,  and 
the  old  one  was  sent  back  to  Brussels  to 
the  skating-rink,  to  be  apportioned 
again,  as  it  happened,  to  the  relief  com- 
mittee in  Tournai,  which  knew  the  need 
of  the  mother  who  wore  it  the  day  I 
saw  her!  Too  much  system,  you  will 
say.  But  there  should  be  no  such  criti- 
cism until  one  has  seen  with  his  own 
eyes  several  millions  depending  entirely 
on  a  relief  organization  for  covering 


146  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

(blankets  and  shoes,  too,  are  a  neceesary; 
part  of  the  aid  given),  and  realize  the 
terrible  obligations  to  divide  the  work 
among  as  many  as  possible  of  the  thou- 
sands of  unemployed,  the  necessity  of 
a  high  standard  of  work,  and  of  jus- 
tice in  division  among  the  nine  prov- 
inces. 

The  scraps  from  the  floors  of  the 
ouvroirs  are  carefully  hoarded  in  sacks, 
in  the  hope  that  the  Germans  may  grant 
the  committee  the  right  to  use  a  factory 
to  re-weave  them  into  some  rough  ma- 
terials in  the  absence  of  cotton  and  wool. 
Some  of  these  cuttings  are  at  present 
being  used  as  filling  for  quilts. 

The  constant  contributions  of  time 
and  service  at  the  strictly  business  ends 
— in  the  warehouses,  or  depots  like  the 
Hippodrome,  or  the  skating-rink — seem 
more  generous  than  all  others.  In  these 
places  the  committees  are  shut  away 
from  that  daily  contact  with  misery  that 


evokes  a  quick  response.  The  business 
there  has  settled  down  to  a  matter  of 
lists  and  accounts:  one  must  work  with 
a  far  vision  for  inspiration.  It  is  quite 
a  different  matter  in  the  actual  ouvroir, 
where  grateful  women  come  all  day  and 
sew,  and  are  sometimes  allowed  to  keep 
their  little  children  beside  them.  There 
you  have  their  stories  and  know  their 
suffering;  you  are  able,  also,  to  teach 
them,  while  they  sew,  how  to  care  for 
their  bodies  and  their  homes,  even  to 
sing,  and  all  the  while  you  realize  that 
the  very  garments  they  are  putting  to- 
gether are  to  go  to  others  even  more  un- 
happy— these  are  the  places  where  serv- 
ice has  its  swift  and  rich  rewards! 
I  have  visited  just  such  blessed  work- 
rooms in  Namur  and  Charleroi  and 
Mons,  in  Antwerp  and  Dinant,  in  fact 
in  dozens  of  cities  up  and  down  the 
length  of  Belgium.  If  they  could  be 
gaily  flagged  as  they  should  be,  we 


148  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

should  see  all  the  country  dotted  with* 
these  centers  of  hope.  And  we  should 
know  that  they  meant  that  thousands  of 
women  in  Belgium  are  being  given  at 
least  a  few  days'  work  every  month. 


XVII 

THE  ANTWERP   MUSIC-HALL 

BEFORE  the  war  the  big  music-hall 
in  Antwerp  offered  a  gay  and  di- 
verting   program.      Every   nigHt 
thousands  drifted  in  to  laugh  and  smoke 
— drawn  by  the  human  desire  for  happi- 
ness.    Here  they  were  care-free,  irre- 
sponsible ;  tragedy  was  forgotten. 

To-day  it  is  still  a  music-hall.  As 
Madame  opened  the  door — from  the 
floor,  from  the  galleries,  from  every 
part  of  the  vast  place  floated  a  wonder- 
ful solemn  music — 1,200  girls  were  sing- 
ing a  Flemish  folk-song  that  might  have 
been  a  prayer.  We  looked  on  a  sea  of 
golden  and  brown  heads  bending  over 

149 


150  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

sewing  tables.  Noble  women  had  res- 
cued them  from  the  wreckage  of  war — 
within  the  shelter  of  this  music-hall 
they  were  working  for  their  lives,  sing- 
ing for  their  souls ! 

And  all  the  time  tfiey  were  preparing 
the  sewing  and  embroidery  materials  for 
3,300  others  working  at  home.  In  other 
words,  this  was  one  of  the  blessed 
ouvroirs  or  workrooms  of  Belgium. 

Off  at  the  left  a  few  tailors  were  cut- 
ting men's  garments.  High  on  the 
stage,  crowded  with  packing-cases,  sat 
the  committee  of  men  who  give  all  their 
time  to  measuring  the  goods,  register- 
ing the  income  and  output  of  materials 
and  finished  garments.  On  the  stage, 
too,  was  an  extraordinary  exhibit.  Three 
forms  presented  three  of  the  quaint- 
est silk  dresses  imaginable,  elaborately 
trimmed  with  ribbons  and  velvets  and 
laces,  and  all  designed  for  women  of 
dainty  figure.  I  laughed  and  then  rather 


THE  ANTWERP  MUSIC-HALL     151 

flushed,  as  I  remembered  the  stories  of  the 
white  satin  slippers  and  chiffon  ball  gowns 
that  had  been  included  in  our  clothing 
offering  of  1914.  I  murmured  some- 
thing of  apology,  and  referred  to  the 
advance  the  Commission  had  made  in 
I9I5>  when  it  had  sent  out  the  appeal  for 
new  materials  only. 

But  Madame  protested:  "Oh,"  slie 
said,  "these  are  here  in  honor!  And  we 
know  that  somebody  once  loved  these 
dainty  dresses,  and  for  that  reason  gave 
them  to  us.  We  love  your  old  clothes ! 
Our  only  sadness  is  that  we  can  not  have 
them  any  more.  One  old  dress  to  be 
made  over  gives  work  for  days  and  days, 
while  the  new  materials  can  be  put  to- 
gether in  one  or  two.  What  will  become 
of  all  my  girls  now  that  I  shall  have  no 
more  of  your  old  clothes  to  furnish" 
them?  How  shall  they  earn  their  3 
francs  (60  cents)  a  week?  At  best  we 
can  allow  each  but  eight  days'  work  out 


152  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

of  fifteen,  and  only  one  person  from 
each  family  may  have  this  chance. 

"But  these  three  dresses  we  shall  not 
touch!"  And  she  smiled  as  she  looked 
again  at  her  exhibit. 

Here  the  whole  attitude  toward  the 
clothing  is  from  the  point  of  view,  not 
of  the  protection  it  gives,  but  of  the  em- 
ployment it  offers.  Without  this  employ- 
ment, without  the  daily  devotion  of  the 
wonderful  women  who  have  built  up 
this  astonishing  organization,  thou- 
sands of  other  women  must  have  been 
on  the  streets — with-  no  opportunity 
(except  the  dread,  ever  present  one) 
through  these  two  years  to  earn  a  franc, 
with  nothing  but  the  soup-lines  to  de- 
pend on  for  bread.  Of  course,  there  is 
always  dire  need  for  the  finished  gar- 
ments. They  are  turned  over  as  fast  as 
they  can  be  to  the  various  other  commit- 
tees that  care  for  the  destitute.  Be- 
tween February,  1915,  and  May,  1916, 


THE  ANTWERP  MUSIC-HALL     153 

articles  valued  at  over  2,000,000  francs 
were  given  out  in  this  way  through  this 
ouvroir  alone. 

But  one  could  endure  cold — anything 
is  better  than  the  moral  degrada- 
tion following  long  periods  of  non-em- 
ployment. So  it  is  not  of  the  garments, 
but  of  the  9,500,000  francs  dispensed  as 
wages,  that  these  women  think.  The 
work  must  go  on.  "See,"  Madame  said, 
"wHat  we  do  with  the  veriest  scraps!" 
A  young  woman  was  putting  together 
an  attractive  baby  quilt.  She  had  four 
pieces  of  an  old  coat,  large  enough  to 
make  the  top  and  lining,  and  inside  she 
was  stitching  literally  dozens  of  little 
scraps  of  light  woolen  materials.  An- 
other was  making  children's  shoes  out 
of  bits  of  carpet  and  wool. 

In  one  whole  section  the  girls  do  noth- 
ing but  embroider  our  American  flour 
sacks.  Artists  draw  designs  to  repre- 
sent the  gratitude  of  Belgium  to  tfie 


154  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

United  States.  The  one  on  the  easel  as 
we  passed  through,  represented  the  lion 
and  the  cock  of  Belgium  guarding  the 
crown  of  the  king,  while  the  sun — the 
great  American  eagle — rises  in  the  East. 
Th'e  sacks  that  are  not  sent  to  America 
as  gifts  are  sold  in  Belgium  as  souvenirs. 
Each  sack  has  its  value  before  being 
worked.  Many  of  them — especially  in 
the  north  of  France — have  been  made 
into  men's  shirts,  and  tiny  babies'  shirts 
and  slips. 

Before  July,  1916,  in  the  Charleroi 
ouvroir,  over  30,000  sacks  had  been 
made  into  15,000  shirts  at  a  cost  of  25 
centimes  per  sack,  and  a  sewing  price  of 
30  centimes  each. 

Each  Monday  the  women  may  work 
on  their  own  garments,  and  on  Tuesday 
all  the  poor  of  the  city  bring  their  cloth- 
ing to  be  patched  or  darned.  A  shoe  sec- 
tion, too,  does  what  it  can  for  old  shoes. 
Such  shoes  and  such  remnants  of  socks 


THE  ANTWERP  MUSIC-HALL     155 

and  of  shirts  as  we  saw!  But  the  more 
difficult  the  job,  the  happier  the  com- 
mittee ! 

During  the  week,  courses  are  given  in 
the  principles  of  dressmaking  and  de- 
sign. In  the  evening  there  are  classes 
for  history,  geography,  literature,  writ- 
ing, and  very  special  attention  is  given 
to  hygiene,  which  is  taught  by  means  of 
the  best  modern  slides.  These  things 
are  splendid,  and  witK  tHe  three  francs 
a  week  wages,  spell  self-respect,  cour- 
age, progress  all  along  the  line.  The 
committee  has  always  been  able  to  se- 
cure the  money  for  the  wages,  but  they; 
can  not  possibly  furnish  the  materials — 
sufficient  new  ones  they  could  never 
have. 

They  are  living  from  day  to  day  on 
the  Hope  that  the  C.  R.  B.  may  be  able 
to  make  an  exception  for  the  Antwerp 
ouvroir,  and  appeal  once  more  for  her 
precious  necessity — "old  clothes!"  This 


156  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

tHe  C.  R.  B.  may  be  able  to  do — but  will 
[England  feel  equally  free  to  make  an  ex- 
ception to  her  ruling  that  since  the  Ger- 
mans have  taken  the  wool  from  the 
Belgian  sheep,  no  clothing  of  any  kind 
can  be  sent  in? 

As  I  was  leaving,  a  thrilling  thing 
happened.  Picture  this  sea  of  golden 
and  brown  heads  low  over  the  heaped 
tables — every  square  foot  of  pit,  gal- 
leries and  entry  packed,  lengths  of  cot- 
ton and  flannel  flung  in  confusion  over 
all  the  balconies  and  from  the  royal  box 
like  war  banners — and  then  suddenly 
see  a  man  making  his  way  through  the 
crowded  packing-cases  on  the  stage  to 
the  footlights!  He  was  the  favorite 
baritone  of  this  one-time  concert  hall, 
and  he  has  come  (as  Ke  does  twice  a 
week)  to  stand  in  the  midst  of  the  pack- 
ing-cases behind  his  accustomed  foot- 
lights to  sing  to  this  audience  driven  in 
by  disaster,  and  to  teach'  them  the  beau- 


THE  ANTWERP  MUSIC-HALL     157 

tiful  Flemish  folk-songs.  They  sing  as 
they  work.  For  several  minutes  neither 
Madame  nor  I  spoke.  Then  she  smiled 
swiftly  and  said :  "Yes,  it  is  sadly  beauti- 
ful— and  you  know,  incidentally,  it  pre- 
yents  much  idle  chatter!" 


XVIII 

LACE 

A  FULL  account  of  the  struggle  of 
the  lace-workers  would  take  us 
straight  to  the  heart  of  the  trag- 
edy of  Belgium.    At  present  it  can  only 
be  intimated.    The  women  who  are  back 
of  this  struggle  represent  a  fine  intelli- 
gence, a  most  fervent  patriotism  and 
most  unswerving  devotion  to  their  peo- 
ple and  their  country. 

Before  the  war,  her  laces  were  the 
particular  pride  of  Belgium.  Flanders 
produced,  beside  the  finest  linen,  the  most 
exquisite  lace  known.  The  Queen  took 
this  industry  under  her  especial  patron- 
age and  tried  in  every  way  to  better 
the  condition  of  the  workers,  and  to 

158 


LACE  159 

raise  the  standard  of  the  output.    We 

need  to  remember  that  when  war  broke 

'\ 
out,    50,000    women    were    supporting 

themselves,  and  often  their  families, 
through  this  work;  we  need  to  remem- 
ber the  suddenness  with  which  the  steel 
ring  was  thrown  about  Belgium — all  im- 
port of  thread,  all  export  of  lace,  at  once 
and  entirely  cut  off.  In  a  few  weeks, 
in  a  few  days,  thousands  of  women  were 
without  hope  of  earning  their  bread — 
at  least  in  the  only  way  hitherto  open  to 
them.  The  number  grew  with  desper- 
ate swiftness.  And  we  need  most  of  all 
to  remember  that  the  chief  lace  centers 
were  in  the  zone  under  direct  military 
rule. 

Women  like  Madame  . . .  grappled  with 
this  situation,  trying  to  save  their  work- 
ers (most  of  them  young  girls)  from  the 
dread  alternative,  trying  by  one  means  and 
another  to  give  them  heart,  and  hoping 
always  that  America  could  make  a  way 


160  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

for  them,  till  finally  that  hope  was 
realized — the  C.  R.  B.  had  gained  the 
permission  of  England  to  bring  in  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  thread,  and  to  take  out  a 
corresponding  amount  of  lace  for  sale  in 
France  and  England,  or  elsewhere. 

A  fever  of  effort  followed.  Every- 
where those  who  had  been  trying  to 
keep  the  groups  of  lace-workers  alive 
were  given  thread.  They  organized  cen- 
ters for  the  control  of  the  output.  The 
thread  must  be  weighed  as  it  was  given 
out,  and  paid  for  by  the  worker  as  a 
guaranty  that  it  would  not  be  sold  to 
some  one  else;  the  weight  of  the  lace 
turned  in  must  tally.  Much  thought 
must  be  put  in  the  selection  of  designs, 
into  the  choice  of  articles  to  be  made — 
things  that  would  interest  the  people  of 
England  and  France  and  America. 

Certain  parts  and  kinds  of  these  laces 
are  made  in  certain  districts  only.  I  am 
told  that  the  very  fine  Malines  lace, 


LACE  161 

inade  now  only  in  a  restricted  area,  will 
not  be  found  much  longer.  All  these 
separate  parts  must  be  brought  to  the 
central  depot  to  be  made  into  tea-cloths 
and  doilies  and  other  articles  for  export. 
The  finest  and  most  necessary  laces  and 
the  linen  for  the  cloths  are  made  in  or 
about  Bruges  and  Courtrai  and  in  other 
towns  in  Flanders,  in  what  is  known  as 
the  "£tape,"  or  zone  of  military  prepa- 
ration, with  which  it  is  almost  impossi- 
ble to  communicate. 

The  C.  R.  B.  is  made  absolutely  re- 
sponsible to  England  that  no  lace  will 
be  sold  in  the  open  market  in  the  occu- 
pied territory  (altho  it  was  allowed  to 
be  sold  in  October  and  November,  1915, 
at  exhibitions  in  several  of  the  large 
cities  of  Belgium),  and  that  all  of  it  be 
exported.  If  it  is  not  sold,  it  must  be 
held  at  Rotterdam. 

One  can  imagine  the  meaning  of  the 
first  export  of  lace  to  those  whose  hearts 


162  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

were  in  this  work.  It  was  not  only  tKat 
they  saw  the  lace-workers  kept  alive,  but 
they  saw  their  country  reunited  with 
the  outside  world.  Her  beautiful  laces 
were  going  to  those  who  would  buy 
them  eagerly,  her  market  would  be  kept 
open. 

Of  necessity,  the  work  became 
strongly  centralized.  The  Brussels  bu- 
reau, where  three  noble  women  espe- 
cially were  giving  literally  every  day  of 
their  time  and  every  particle  of  their 
energy  and  talent,  became  the  official 
headquarters,  and  45,000  lace-workers 
were  employed  under  orders  sent  out  by 
this  central  committee.  Every  day  they 
came  to  plan,  to  design,  to  direct.  They 
were  handling  thousands  of  articles, 
and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  francs. 
They  carefully  examined  every  yard 
sent  in,  rejecting  any  piece  below  the 
standard,  encouraging  excellence  in 
every  possible  way.  Never  in  recent 


LACE  163 

times  have  there  been  such  beautiful 
laces  made,  and  they  are  being  sold  at 
about  half  what  was  asked  before  the 
war.  Many  of  the  designs  are  copies  of 
the  best  ancient  models,  other  lovely 
ones  turn  on  the  present  situation,  hav- 
ing for  motive  the  roses  of  the  Queen, 
the  arms  of  the  provinces,  the  animals 
of  the  Allies. 

Madame  . . .  made  an  unforgettable 
picture — tall,  golden-haired,  exquisite,  ar- 
ranging and  re-arranging  the  insets  for 
her  cloths  and  cushions — and  recounting, 
as  she  set  her  patterns,  the  steps  in  the 
struggle  for  the  lace-workers.  There 
had  been  dangers,  some  were  in  prison. 
As  I  listened  I  felt  the  fire  within  must 
consume  her.  I  understood  why  there 
.were  women  in  prison,  why  martyrdom 
was  always  a  near  and  real  possibility. 

There  were  always  discouragements 
of  one  kind  or  another.  At  the  bureau, 
one  day,  Madame's  eyes  were  red  when 


164  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

she  came  downstairs.  She  had  just  had 
to  turn  off  a  group  of  workers;  there 
was  no  thread  to  give  them.  At  best, 
in  order  that  all  may  be  helped  a  little, 
no  one  person  may  work  more  than  30 
hours  a  week,  nor  receive  more  than  3 
francs  (or  60  cents)  a  week  as  wages  1 
But  on  the  whole  the  lace  committees 
are  overwhelmingly  grateful  for  the  op- 
portunities they  have  had.  Up  to 
November,  1916,  they  have  dispensed 
6,000,000  francs  in  wages.  They  have 
given  two  weeks'  work  a  month  to 
45,000  women,  25,000  of  whom  are 
skilled,  10,000  of  average  ability,  and 
10,000  beginners.  There  will  be  a  de- 
ficit when  the  war  is  over.  "But  what 
of  that?"  they  say,  "if  only  we  can  keep 
on !  On  the  Great  Day  we  shall  give 
back  to  tHe  Queen  her  chosen  industry, 
fully  three  years  ahead  of  where  she  left 
it.  She  will  find  all  the  standards  raised, 
her  women  better  trained  and  equipped 


LACE  165 

to  care  for  themselves,  and  to  re-estab- 
lish Belgium  as  the  lace-maker  of  the 
world." 

It  has  been  extremely  difficult  for  the 
C.  R.  B.  to  handle  the  lace  in  the  United 
States.  Its  great  value  necessitates 
much  more  machinery  and  time  than 
could  be  spared  from  the  all-important 
ravitaillement  duty.  The  orders  from 
England  and  France  are  much  easier  to 
take  care  of.  On  one  happy  day  Paquin 
wrote  for  all  the  Point  de  Paris 
and  Valenciennes  they  could  supply. 
Certain  friends  in  London  and  New 
York  are  every  now  and  then  sending 
in  individual  requests.  On  a  red-letter 
day  the  Queen  of  Roumania  ordered, 
through  her  Legation,  three  very  beau- 
tiful table-cloths,  and  quantities  of  other 
fine  laces.  And  it  is  the  hope  of  the 
committee  that  the  number  of  these 
friends  will  grow.  Needless  to  say, 
hardly  a  C.  R.  B.  representative  leaves 


166  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Belgium  without  taking  with  him 
some  example  of  this  exquisite  work,  a 
testimony  to  others  of  the  splendid  de- 
yotion  of  the  women  of  these  lace  com- 
mittees. 


XIX 

A   TOY   FACTORY 

I  WAS  reminded  again  to-day  of  how 
constant  work  must  be  the  only  thing 
that  makes  living  possible  to  many  of 
tKese  women.  We  were  at  lunch,  when 
suddenly  the  roar  of  the  German 
guns  cut  across  our  talk.  We  rushed 
into  the  street,  where  a  gesticulating 
crowd  had  already  located  the  five 
Allied  aeroplanes  high  above  us.  Little 
whi|e  clouds  dotted  the  sky  all  about 
them  —  puffs  of  white  smoke  that 
marked  the  bursting  shrapnel.  Tho  the 
guns  seemed  to  be  firing  just  behind  our 
house,  we  believed  we  were  quite  out  of 
danger.  However,  Marie  ran  to  us  quite 
white  and  with  her  hands  over  her  ears. 
"Oh,  Madame!"  she  cried,  "the  shrap- 

167 


168  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

nel  is  bursting  all  about  the  kitchen!" 
She  had  experienced  it.  She  had  told 
me  once  that  her  sister  had  died  of  fright 
three  days  after  the  war  began,  and  I 
realized  now  that  she  probably  had. 
Our  picturesque  Leon  slipt  over  to 
assure  me  that  this  was  not  a  real  attack, 
but  just  a  visit  to  give  us  hope  on  the 
second  anniversary  of  the  beginning  of 
the  war,  to  tell  us  the  Allies  were  think- 
ing of  us,  and  that  we  should  soon  be 
delivered.  Without  doubt  they  would 
<drop  a  message  of  some  sort. 

I  thought  of  our  United  States  Min- 
ister and  his  proximity  to  the  Luxem- 
bourg railroad  station.  He  had  several 
times  smilingly  exprest  concern  over 
tKat  proximity. 

I  remembered,  too,  the  swift  answer 
of  Monsieur  . . .  who  lives  opposite  the 
railroad  station  at  Mons.  Bombs  had 
just  been  dropt  on  this  station — one  had 
fallen  in  front  of  his  house,  and  when 


A  TOY  FACTORY  169 

I  asked  if  he  and  his  wife  would  not  con- 
sider moving  he  replied,  "Madame,  our 
two  sons  are  in  the  trenches — should  we 
not  be  ashamed  to  think  of  this  as 
danger?" 

All  the  while  the  aeroplanes  were 
circling  and  the  guns  were  booming. 
Then  suddenly  one  of  the  aviators  made 
a  sensational  drop  to  within  a  few  hun- 
dred meters  of  the  Molenbeek  Station, 
threw  his  bombs,  and  before  the  guns 
could  right  themselves,  regained  his 
altitude — and  all  five  were  off,  marvel- 
ously  escaping  the  puffs  of  white  before 
and  behind  them. 

This  was  thrilling,  till  suddenly 
flashed  the  sickening  realization  of  what 
it  really  meant.  The  man  behind  the 
gun  was  doing  his  utmost  to  kill  the 
man  in  the  machine.  It  was  horrible — 
horrible  to  us. 

But  to  Belgian  wives  and  mothers 
what  must  it  have  been?  As  they 


170  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

looked  up  they  cried:  "Is  that  my  boy; 
— my  husband,  who  has  come  back  to 
his  home  this  way?  After  two  years, 
is  he  there?  My  God,  can  they  reach 
him?"  The  only  answer  was  the  roar 
of  the  guns,  the  bursting  shrapnel — and 
they  covered  their  eyes. 

I  visited  Madame  . . . ,  whose  only  son 
is  in  the  flying  corps,  at  her  toy  factory 
the  following  day,  and  realized  what 
the  experience  had  cost  her.  Her  com- 
ment, however,  was,  "Well,  now  I  be- 
lieve I  am  steeled  for  the  next." 

Madame  is  accomplishing  one  of  the 
finest  pieces  of  work  being  done  in  Bel- 
gium to-day.  Before  the  war  she  had 
a  considerable  reputation  as  a  painter 
in  water  colors.  As  suddenly  as  it  came, 
she  found  her  home  emptied  of  sons, 
brothers,  nephews,  and  she  went 
through  the  common  experience  of  try- 
ing to  construct  something  from  the 
chaos  of  those  tragic  days.  Her  first 


A  TOY  FACTORY  171 

thought  was  of  what  must  be  done  for 
the  little  nephews  and  nieces  who  were 
left.  They  must  be  kept  happy  as  well  as 
alive.  And  she  wondered  if  she  could  not 
turn  her  painting  to  use  in  making  toys 
for  them.  Often  before  the  war  when 
sketching  in  Flanders  she  had  looked  at 
the  quaint  old  villages,  full  of  beauty  in 
color  and  line,  and  felt  that  each  was  a 
jewel  in  itself  and  ought,  somehow,  to  be 
preserved  as  a  whole.  And  suddenly  she 
decided  to  try  and  reproduce  them  in 
toy  form  for  children.  She  drew  beau- 
tiful designs  of  the  villages  of  Furnes 
and  Dixmude,  loving  ones  of  churches 
that  had  already  been  destroyed.  She 
secured  wood,  began  carving  her  houses, 
trees,  furniture — then  arranged  her  vil- 
lages, drawing  the  patterns  for  the  chil- 
dren to  build  from.  Needless  to  say  tlie 
nieces  and  nephews  were  enchanted; 
and  she  worked  ahead  on  other  villages 
for  other  children. 


172  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Not  very  long  after  this  she  visited 
the  Queen's  ambulance  in  the  palace  at 
Brussels,  and  as  she  talked  with  the 
wounded  Belgian  soldiers,  the  thought 
of  the  hopeless  future  of  the  mutilated 
ones  tormented  her.  It  suddenly  flashed 
over  her  that  they  might  be  given  hope, 
if  they  could  be  taught  to  make  her  be- 
loved toys.  She  was  allowed  to  bring 
in  models — the  soldiers  were  interested 
at  once — the  authorities  gave  her  per- 
mission to  teach  them. 

Later  she  secured  a  building  in  Brus- 
sels— her  sister-in-law  and  others  of  her 
family  came  to  help.  They  wisely  laid 
in  a  good  supply  of  beechwood  in  ad- 
vance, got  their  paints  and  other  ma- 
terials ready,  and  began  to  work  with  a 
handful  of  soldiers.  She  soon  needed 
machines  for  cutting  the  wood,  and  then 
found  that  no  matter  how  thoroughly 
healed,  a  man  who  has  been  terribly 
wounded,  the  equilibrium  of  whose  body 


A  TOY  FACTORY  173 

had  been  destroyed  by  the  loss  of  an 
arm  or  leg,  or  both,  could  not  soon  be 
trusted  with  a  dangerous  machine — and 
she  had  to  engage  a  few  expert  work- 
men for  this  department.  Girls  begged 
to  be  taken  in,  and  she  added  nine  to  her 
fifty  soldiers — one  of  them  a  pretty, 
black-haired  refugee  from  the  north  of 
France.  The  thick  book  with  all  the  ad- 
dresses of  applicants  for  work  who  have 
had  to  be  refused,  is  a  mute  evidence  of 
the  saddest  part  of  this  whole  situation 
— the  lack  of  work  for  those  who  beg  to 
be  kept  off  the  soup-lines. 

The  fortunate  ones  are  paid  by  piece- 
work, but  always  the  directors  try  to 
arrange  that  each  man  shall  be  able  to 
earn  about  2^  francs  a  day. 

Madame  is  not  merely  accomplishing 
a  present  palliative,  but  aiming  at  mak- 
ing men  self-respecting,  useful  members 
of  the  State  for  their  own  and  their 
country's  good. 


XX 

ANOTHER   TOY   FACTORY 

THE  following  day,  I  visited  an- 
other kind  of  toy  factory. 
Madame  .  .  .,  who  had  lost  her 
only  son  early  in  the  war,  works  proba- 
bly in  the  most  inconvenient  building  in 
Brussels,  which  she  has  free  of  charge. 
She  works  there  all  day  long,  every  day, 
furnishing  employment  for  between  30 
and  40  girls,  who  would  otherwise  have 
to  be  on  the  soupes.  I  went  from  one 
room  to  another,  where  they  were  busily 
constructing  dolls,  and  animals,  and  all 
sorts  of  fascinating  toys  out  of  bits  of 
cotton  and  woolen  materials  —  cheap, 
salable  toys. 

This  is  one  of  the  things  that  we  must 

174 


ANOTHER  TOY  FACTORY        175 

remember  if  we  wish  properly  to  appre- 
ciate the  work  the  women  are  doing — 
most  of  it  is  being  carried  on  in  build- 
ings that  we  should  consider  almost  im- 
possible— no  elevators;  everywhere  the 
necessity  of  climbing  long  flights  of 
stairs;  no  convenient  sanitary  arrange- 
ments— but  nothing  discourages  them. 

Madame  began  by  making  bouncing 
balls  in  the  Belgian  colors,  stuffed  with 
a  kind  of  moss.  They  cost  only  a  few 
centimes,  and  sold  as  fast  as  she  could 
make  them.  When  the  order  came  that 
they  were  no  longer  to  be  made  in  these 
colors,  she  ripped  up  those  she  had  on 
hand,  and  began  new  ones,  omitting  the 
black.  The  balls  must  go  on.  Another 
day  all  the  stuffing  for  her  balls  was 
requisitioned.  She  rushed  out,  up  and 
down,  street  after  street,  seeking  a  sub- 
stitute, and  by  night  the  little  store- 
room was  filled  with  a  kind  of  dry  grass 
— and  the  balls  could  go  on. 


176  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

The  day  of  my  first  visit  there  were 
6  of  the  32  girls  absent  because  of 
illness.  Madame  said  she  usually  had 
that  large  a  percentage  out  because  of 
intestinal  troubles  of  one  sort  or  an- 
other. They  get  desperately  tired  of 
their  monotonous  food,  and  whenever 
they  can  scrape  together  a  few  extra 
pennies,  they  go  to  one  of  the  few  choco- 
late shops  still  open  and  make  them- 
selves ill. 

Here,  too,  they  are  looking  to  Amer- 
ica. If  only  they  could  get  their  toys 
to  our  markets,  they  could  take  in  many 
who  are  suffering  for  want  of  work — • 
and  one  feels  that  America  would  be 
delighted  with  every  toy. 

It  is  Madame  herself  who  designs 
them.  She  is  trying  always  to  get  some- 
thing new,  striking.  In  the  C.  R.  B. 
office  one  day  I  noticed  a  representative 
off  in  a  corner,  busy  with  his  pencil,  and 
found  him  struggling  to  represent  some 


ANOTHER  TOY  FACTORY   177 

sort  of  balancing  bird — a  suggestion  for 
Madame. 

She  makes  tliese  lovely  toys  from  the 
veriest  scraps  of  clotH,  old  paper,  straw, 
with  pebbles  picked  up  from  the  roads 
for  weights. 

In  the  beginning  slie  knew  nothing  at 
all  about  such  work,  nor  did  any  one  of 
the  young  girls  she  was  trying  to  help. 
But  such  a  spirit  experiments !  She  ground 
newspapers  in  a  meat-grinder  to  try  to 
evolve  some  kind  of  papier-mache.  She 
learned  her  processes  by  producing 
things  with  her  own  hands,  and  then 
taught  each  woman  as  she  employed 
her.  Thus  she,  too,  is  not  only  keeping 
her  corps  from  the  present  soup-line,  but 
preparing  a  body  of  trained  workers 
for  the  future.  The  shops  in  Brussels 
sell  these  toys — a  few  have  reached  as 
far  as  Holland. 

Everywhere  in  Belgium  one  is  imprest 
with  the  facility  in  the  handling  of 


178  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

color,  of  clay  or  wood.  There  is  the 
most  unusual  feeling  for  decorative 
effect;  the  tiniest  children  in  the  schools 
stiow  a  striking  aptitude  for  design  and 
modeling,  and  an  astonishing  sense  of 
rhythm.  One  is  constantly  struck  by 
this;  it  is  a  delight  to  hear  a  group  of 
three-year  olds  carrying  an  intricate 
song  without  accompaniment,  as  they 
go  through  the  figures  of  a  dance. 


XXI 

THE   MUTILES 

AT  last  I  met  the  little  Madame — all 
nerve,  energy — a  flame  flashing 
from  one  plant  under  her  charge 
to  the  next.  I  had  seen  her  whirling  by 
in  a  car,  one  of  the  two  Belgian  women 
allowed  a  limited  pass.  I  had  heard  how 
she  presided  over  councils  of  men,  as 
well  as  of  women;  that  she  had  won  the 
admiration  of  all.  With  her  it  is  not  a 
question  of  how  many  hours  she  spends ; 
she  gives  literally  every  hour  of  her 
time.  It  was  especially  of  her  work  for 
the  mutilated  victims  of  the  war  that  we 
talked  this  morning.  She  took  me  to 
the  park  at  Woulwe,  where  she  has  180 
men  being  trained  in  various  trades. 

179 


180  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Ten  months  ago  she  decided  that  one 
of  the  most  important  things  Belgium 
had  to  accomplish  was  to  save  its  muti- 
lated for  themselves  and  the  State.  The 
whole  problem  of  the  unemployment 
brought  on  by  the  war  was  terrific.  In 
April,  1916,  over  672,000  workmen  were 
idle.  But  the  mutilated  soldiers  formed 
the  most  heartbreaking  part  of  this 
problem.  They  must  at  once  be  taught 
trades  that  would  fill  their  days  and 
make  them  self-supporting  in  the  future. 

First  of  all,  their  surroundings  must 
be  cheerful  and  healthy;  no  cramped 
buildings  in  the  city,  and  yet  something 
easily  accessible  from  Brussels.  She 
told  me  how  she  searched  the  environs 
until  she  came  upon  an  old,  apparently 
deserted  villa  at  Woulwe  with  beautiful 
spacious  grounds,  orchard  and  vegetable 
garden.  She  quickly  sought  out  the 
owner  and  appealed  to  him  to  turn  his 
property  over  to  the  "Mutiles."  In 


THE  MUTELES  181 

three  days  a  letter  told  her  the  request 
was  granted,  and  within  a  few  hours  an 
architect  was  at  work  on  the  plans.  He 
developed  a  cottage  system  with  every- 
thing on  one  floor,  sleeping-rooms, 
workrooms,  unlimited  fresh  air  and 
Ijght;  the  most  modern  sanitary  equip- 
ment; and  for  the  workrooms,  every 
practical  arrangement  possible.  There 
is  a  gymnasium  with  a  resident  physi- 
cian directing  the  work.  His  duty  is 
one  of  the  most  difficult;  it  is  not  easy 
to  convince  the  men  of  the  value  of  all 
the  bothersome  exercises  he  prescribes. 
The  restoration  of  the  equilibrium  of 
their  broken  bodies  is  to  them  often  a 
vague  end.  At  first  some  even  try  to 
escape  using  the  artificial  arms  and  legs 
provided  them. 

The  cottages  are  grouped  about  the 
garden,  under  the  trees,  connected  by; 
easy  little  paths  for  the  lame  and  the 
blind.  The  old  villa  holds  the  office, 


182  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

the  dining-room,  and  a  big,  airy  pavilion, 
where  the  men  may  gather  for  a 
weekly  entertainment,  cards  or  music. 
A  bowling  alley  has  been  converted 
into  the  quaintest  little  chapel  imagin- 
able, with  the  Virgin  Mary  and  the 
statues  of  the  King  and  Queen  in  very 
close  company,  and  back  of  them  a 
splendid  Belgian  flag.  Besides  the  regu- 
lar gatherings,  the  men  hold  special 
services  here  for  their  comrades  dead  on 
the  Field  of  Honor. 

One  by  one  new  cottages  are  being 
built;  more  trades  are  being  taught. 
Electricity  and  book-binding  have  been 
added  recently,  and  the  course  for  chauf- 
feurs. The  greater  number  of  the  men 
work  in  the  shoe  shops,  where  there  is 
one  workroom  for  the  Walloons  and 
another  for  the  Flemings;  but  the  scar- 
city of  leather  greatly  hinders  this  im- 
portant department.  In  certain  sections 
they  are  already  using  machinery  manu- 


THE  MUTILES  183 

factured  by  the  men  themselves.  And 
it  must  be  kept  in  mind  all  the  time  that 
these  men  before  the  war  were  almost 
without  exception  in  the  fields. 

Madame  told  us  that  the  most  cheer- 
ful workmen  are  the  blind,  who  seemed, 
however,  most  to  be  pitied,  as  they  sat 
there  weaving  their  baskets  and  chair 
seats.  She  said  that  often  during  their 
weekly  entertainments  the  entire  com- 
pany would  be  thrown  into  spasms  of 
laughter  by  the  sudden  meowing  of  cats 
or  cackling  of  hens  in  their  midst.  These 
were  the  tricks  of  the  blind  men,  who 
were  as  gay  as  children. 

The  atelier  is  truly  a  joyous  place,  set 
in  a  garden  tended  by  the  soldiers,  and 
inside  flooded  with  light.  The  walls  are 
covered  with  models  and  designs.  Some 
of  the  men  were  busy  with  patterns  for 
lace  and  embroidery.  Others  were 
modeling.  A  legless  soldier,  in  the 
trenches  only  a  month  ago,  was  already 


184  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

handling  his  clay  with  pleasure  and  skill. 
But  the  most  remarkable  work  was  that 
of  a  man  who  had  lost  his  right  arm. 
Before  the  war,  like  the  others,  he  had 
been  a  "cultivateur,"  never  conscious  of 
a  talent  that  under  the  encouragement 
of  a  good  teacher  was  developing  aston- 
ishingly. With  the  pencil  in  his  left  hand, 
he  produced  designs  of  leaves,  flowers 
and  animals  of  great  beauty. 

One  of  the  strangest,  saddest  sights 
in  the  world  is  the  workroom  for  artifi- 
cial limbs.  Here  men  who  have  lost 
their  own  arms  and  legs  sit  construct- 
ing arms  and  legs  for  their  comrades 
who  are  to  lose  theirs  on  the  battlefield. 
A  soldier  who  had  his  right  arm  and  all 
but  two  fingers  of  his  left  hand  shot 
away,  was  filing,  hammering,  and  shap- 
ing an  artificial  arm.  A  man  with  half 
of  each  forearm  gone  was  able,  by  means 
of  a  simple  leather  appliance,  to  make 
thirty-five  brushes  a  day.  Here  they 


THE  MUTILES  185 

were  making,  too,  the  gymnasium  ap- 
paratus for  the  muscular  exercises  which 
help  to  restore  the  equilibrium  of  their 
own  bodies. 

After  visiting  all  the  workshops,  we 
went  to  one  of  the  cheery  cottage  dor- 
mitories. It  was  noon-time  now,  and 
the  men,  deciding  that  we  were  apt  to 
pass  that  way,  had  quickly  decorated 
the  front  porch  with  the  flags  of  the 
Allies,  daringly  binding  our  American 
flag  with  them!  Then  with  a  yellow 
sand  they  had  written  on  the  darker 
earth  in  front  of  the  cottage:  "To  the 
Welcome  Ones — the  Brave  Allies" — 
(again  they  had  included  us !)  "we  offer 
the  gratitude  of  their  soldiers!" 


XXII 

THE   LITTLE   PACKAGE 

ONE  morning  in  Antwerp  I  saw 
women  with  string  bags  filled 
with  all  sorts  of  small  packages, 
some  with  larger  boxes  in  their  arms, 
hurrying  toward  a  door  over  which  was 
the  sign  "Le  Petit  Paquet"— the  Little 
Package.  In  the  hallway  many  others 
were  trying  to  decipher  various  posted 
notices.  One  black-haired  woman, 
empty  bag  in  hand,  was  going  through 
the  list  marked  "Kinds  and  quantities 
of  food  allowed  in  'Le  Petit  Paquet' 
for  our  soldiers,  prisoners  in  Germany." 
This,  then  told  the  story — husbands 
and  sons  were  in  prison — wives  and 
mothers  were  here !  The  posted  notices, 
tHe  organizations  within  achieved  by  24 

186 


THE  LITTLE  PACKAGE          187 

devoted  women — the  mountains  of  little 
brown  packages  each  carefully  addrest, 
approved  for  contents  and  weight,  and 
ready  for  shipment — these  connected 
the  two  sad  extremes. 

This  morning  the  receiving-room  was 
crowded,  as  it  is  every  morning,  I  am 
told.  The  directors  had  been  standing 
back  of  the  long  counters  since  7:30; 
women  of  every  class  pressing  along 
the  front,  depositing  their  precious 
offerings. 

Each  prisoner  is  allowed  a  monthly 
5OO-gram  parcel-post  package,  and  a  10- 
pound  box,  which  may  contain,  beside 
food,  tobacco  and  clothing.  The  per- 
mitted articles  include  cocoa,  chocolate 
and  coffee;  tinned  fisH  and  vegetables 
and  soups;  powdered  milk  and  jam. 
Soap  may  be  sent  with*  the  clothing. 
One  mother  had  arranged  her  parcels  in 
a  pair  of  wooden  sabots  which  she  hoped 
to  have  passed. 


188  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

Such  a  rush  of  unwrapping,  weighing, 
re-wrapping.  There  seemed  hardly  a 
moment  for  breathing,  and  yet  somehow 
there  was  time  to  listen  to  stories,  to 
answer  questions,  give  courage  to  hun- 
dreds who  found  in  these  rooms  their 
closest  connection  with  their  loved  ones. 
One  could  see  that  they  were  loath  to 
go — they  would  have  liked  to  stay  and 
watch  the  final  wrapping  and  register- 
ing— to  actually  see  their  tokens  to  the 
train ! 

On  this  day  there  was  a  special  gift 
box  from  Cardinal  Mercier  for  every 
prisoner  from  the  province.  Antwerp 
has  6,000  prisoners  in  Germany,  and 
through  the  offerings  of  relatives  or 
friends,  or  of  the  city  itself  when  these 
fail,  each  one  receives  a  permitted  gift. 

One  sees  at  a  glance  what  an  enor- 
mous task  the  bookkeeping  alone  en- 
tails— record  of  contents,  addresses  of 
senders,  distribution,  registering  of  re- 


THE  LITTLE  PACKAGE          189 

ceived  packages,  and  numberless  other 
entries.  And  each  month  the  instruc- 
tions are  changing,  which  renders  the 
work  still  more  arduous. 

And  one  is  astonished  over  and  over 
again  at  the  amount  of  sheer  physical 
energy  women  are  putting  into  their 
service.  Belgium  has  some  40,000  pris- 
oners in  Germany.  In  Brussels  and 
other  cities  other  women  are  repeating 
what  the  directors  in  Antwerp  were  do- 
ing that  morning. 


XXIII 

THE    GREEN    BOX 

THERE  are  seven  rooms  in  Brus- 
sels, each  with  a  long  table  in  the 
middle,  and  with  rows  upon  rows 
of  green  wooden  boxes  (about  the  size 
of  a  macaroni  box)  on  shelf-racks 
against  walls.  The  racks,  too,  are 
painted  the  color  of  hope — the  green 
which  after  the  war  might  well  deserve 
a  place  with  the  red,  orange  and  black, 
for  having  so  greatly  comforted  the  peo- 
ple when  all  display  of  their  national 
colors  was  supprest.  Each  box  has  a 
hook  in  front  from  which  hangs  a  paste- 
board card,  marked  with  a  number;  it 
hangs  there  if  the  box  is  full,  when 
empty  it  is  filed. 

190 


THE  GREEN  BOX  191 

The  first  morning  I  happened  in  on 
one  of  these  sections,  I  found  a  director 
and  three  pretty  young  girls  feverishly 
busy  with  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
little  paper  bags.  There  were  as  many 
green  boxes  as  the  table  would  hold, 
arranged  before  them,  with  scales  at 
either  end.  They  were  running  back 
and  forth  from  the  pantry  with  a  bowl 
or  an  apronful  of  something,  and  then 
weighing  and  pouring  into  the  bags 
tiny  portions  of  beans  and  chicory,  salt 
and  sugar,  bacon  and  other  things. 
They  weighed  and  poured  as  fast  as  they 
could  and  with  almost  joyous  satisfac- 
tion tucked  the  little  bags  one  after  an- 
other into  the  boxes.  Then  they  dove 
into  the  big  vegetable  baskets  at  one  end 
of  the  room,  and  each  box  was  made  gay 
with  a  lettuce  or  cauliflower.  For  some 
there  were  bottles  of  milk,  or  a  few  pre- 
cious potatoes  or  eggs.  If  the  egg  chest 
had  been  gold,  it  could  hardly  have  been 


192  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

more  treasured.  For  a  moment  it 
seemed  the  war  must  be  a  horrible 
dream.  This  was  really  the  day  before 
Christmas !  There  were  even  a  few  red 
apples — as  a  special  surprize,  some  one 
had  contributed  two  kilos  that  day. 
Since  they  were  obviously  far  short  of 
enough  to  furnish  one  for  each  box,  the 
directors  decided  to  tuck  one  into  the 
box  for  each  mother  whom  they  knew 
to  have  a  little  boy  or  girl.  Box  after 
box  took  its  place  on  the  shelves  until 
finally,  by  two  o'clock,  all  gaps  were 
filled,  and  a  curious  wall-garden  grew 
half-way  up  to  the  ceiling.  It  might  well 
have  been  Christmas,  but  actually  this 
scene  had  been  repeated  two  days  a 
week,  week  in  and  week  out,  for  over 
two  and  a  half  years,  and  nobody  stops 
to  question  how  many  long  months  it 
must  continue. 

Some  time  before  the  last  box  was  on 
its  shelf,  the  first  woman  with  a  string 


THE  GREEN  BOX  193 

bag  on  her  arm  arrived.  She  was  care- 
fully drest,  intelligent-looking,  a  woman 
of  about  fifty.  Later  I  found  that  be- 
fore the  war  she  had  a  comfortable 
home,  with  servants  and  a  motor-car. 
She  slipt  quietly  along  the  racks  till  she 
found  the  card  with  her  number,  took 
her  box  from  the  shelf  and  transferred 
the  tiny  sacks  and  the  two  eggs  to  her 
string  bag.  Then  she  placed  the  little 
packet  of  empty  bags  and  string  she 
was  returning  on  the  table,  and,  after 
answering  a  few  questions  about  her 
two  children,  went  slowly  downstairs. 
None  but  the  Committee,  or  equally  un- 
fortunate ones  who  came  as  she  did, 
need  know  she  had  been  there.  This 
was  Wednesday;  she  could  come  again 
on  Friday.  Other  women  came,  and,  as 
the  first,  each  could  go  to  her  box  with- 
out asking,  and  find  the  precious  pack- 
ages— mere  mouthfuls  as  they  seemed 
to  me! 


194  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

I  thought  I  smelled  soup,  and  fol- 
lowed Madame  ...  to  a  little  side  room 
where  I  saw  chairs  and  a  white-covered 
table.  Her  cook  was  just  depositing  a 
big  can  of  thick  soup  which  she  had  been 
preparing  at  home,  and  which  Madame 
had  ordered  brought  to  the  center  each 
distribution  day.  Any  one  who  wishes 
may  slip  into  this  room  on  her  way  out, 
sit  at  a  dainty  table,  and  drink  a  bowl 
of  hot  soup. 

By  half-past  two  the  place  was  filled. 
Dozens  of  women  were  busy  with  their 
bags  and  boxes,  while  half  a  dozen  di- 
rectors were  tidying  up,  storing  strings 
and  sacks,  filing  cards,  washing  utensils; 
there  was  a  most  heartening  atmosphere 
of  busyness  and  cheerfulness.  And  all 
the  while  one  group  was  telling  its  story 
to  the  other  and  receiving  the  comfort 
warm  hearts  could  give.  I  overheard  the 
promise  of  a  bed  to  one,  or  coal  to 
another,  and  over  and  over  again  the 


THE  GREEN  BOX  195 

"Yes,  I  understand;  I,  too,  am  without 
news."  From  all  the  husbands  and  sons 
at  the  front  no  word !  These  women  met 
on  the  ground  of  their  common  suffer- 
ing. One  of  the  saddest  of  all  sad  things 
happened  that  afternoon,  when  a  mother, 
on  seeing  the  lovely  "unnecessary"  apple, 
burst  into  tears.  For  so  long,  so  long, 
her  little  Marie  had  had  nothing  but  the 
ration  prescribed  to  keep  her  from  starv- 
ing. This  mother  broke  down  as  she 
dropt  the  red  apple  into  her  bag. 

These  were  all  people  who  had  been 
well-off,  even  comfortable,  but  whose 
funds  either  suddenly,  at  the  beginning, 
or  gradually  through  the  two  terrible 
years,  had  been  exhausted.  Mostly  their 
men  were  in  the  trenches;  there  were 
children  or  old  people  to  care  for;  they 
had  done  their  utmost,  but  at  last  were 
forced  to  accept  help.  I  wondered  how 
these  few  pitiful  little  bags  could  make 
any  difference.  The  slice  of  unsmoked 


196  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

bacon  was  neither  so  broad  nor  so  thick 
as  the  palm  of  my  hand,  and  yet  that 
was  to  be  their  meat  and  butter  for  three 
days!  In  this  distribution  center  it 
seemed  absolutely  nothing,  but  when  I 
visited  the  homes  later  I  saw  it  was  a 
great  deal. 

In  Brussels  there  were  in  October, 
1916,  no  less  than  5,000  "Pauvres  Hon- 
teux"  or  "Ashamed  Poor"  (there  must  be 
many  more  now)  being  helped  through 
the  seven  sections  of  this  "Assistance 
Discrete,"  each  of  which  carries  the  same 
beautiful  motto,  "Donne,  et  tais-toi," 
"Give,  and  be  silent."  At  the  very  be- 
ginning of  the  war  a  great-hearted 
woman  saw  where  the  chief  danger  of 
misery  lay.  The  relief  organizations 
would  naturally  first  look  after  the 
wounded,  the  homeless,  the  very  poor. 
Those  who  were  accustomed  to  accept 
charity  would  make  the  earliest  demands. 
But  what  about  those  whose  business  was 


THE  GREEN  BOX  197 

slowly  being  ruined,  whose  reserves  were 
small?  What  about  school-teachers, 
artists,  and  other  members  of  profes- 
sional classes?  And  widows  living  on 
securities  invested  abroad,  or  children  of 
gentle  upbringing,  whose  fathers  had 
gone  to  the  front  expecting  to  return  in 
three  or  four  months?  She  saw  many 
of  them  starving  rather  than  go  on  the 
soup-lines. 

She  had  a  vision  of  true  mutual  aid. 
Each  person  who  had  should  become  the 
sister  of  her  who  had  not  There  should 
be  a  sharing  of  individual  with  individual 
She  did  not  think  of  green  boxes  or  sec- 
tions, but  of  person  linked  with  person 
in  the  spirit  of  Fraternity.  But  the  num- 
ber of  the  desperate  grew  too  rapidly, 
her  first  idea  of  direct  individual  help 
had  to  be  abandoned,  and  one  after 
another  distribution  centers  were  organ- 
ized. An  investigator  was  put  in  charge 
of  each  center  who  reported  personally 


198  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

on  all  the  cases  that  were  brought  in, 
either  directly  or  indirectly  to  the  com- 
mittee. The  Relief  Committee  granted  a 
subsidy  of  10,000  francs  a  month,  which, 
one  sees  at  a  glance,  can  not  nearly  cover 
the  need.  So  day  after  day  the  directors 
of  each  section  canvass  their  districts  for 
money  and  food,  and  by  dint  of  an  un- 
tiring devotion  raise  the  monthly  10,000 
to  about  28,000  francs.  But,  unfor- 
tunately, every  day  more  of  war  means 
wretched  ones  forced  to  the  wall,  and 
this  sum  is  always  far  from  meeting  the 
distress.  We  have  only  to  divide  the 
30,000  francs  by  the  5,000  on  the  lists, 
to  see  what,  at  best,  each  family  may  re- 
ceive. 

I  went  with  Mademoiselle  . . . ,  an  in- 
vestigator, to  visit  one  of  these  families. 
A  charming  old  gentleman  received  us. 
I  should  say  he  was  about  seventy-three. 
He  had  been  ill,  and  was  most  cheerful 
over  what  he  called  his  "recovery,"  tho 


THE  GREEN  BOX  199 

to  us  he  still  looked  far  from  well.  The 
drawing-room  was  comfortable,  spot- 
lessly clean;  there  was  no  fire.  W'e 
talked  of  his  children,  both  of  whom  were 
married ;  one  son  was  in  Italy,  another  in 
Russia — the  war  had  cut  off  all  word 
or  help  from  both.  He  himself  had  been 
a  successful  engineer  in  his  day,  but  he 
had  not  saved  much,  his  illness  and  two 
years  of  war  had  eaten  up  everything. 
He  was  interested  in  Mexico  and  in  the 
Panama  Canal,  and  we  chatted  on  until 
Mademoiselle  felt  we  must  go.  As  we 
were  shaking  hands,  she  opened  her  black 
velvet  bag  and  took  out  an  egg  which 
she  laughingly  left  on  tKe  table  as  Her 
visiting  card.  She  did  it  perfectly,  and 
he  laughed  back  cheerily,  "After  the 
war,  my  dear,  I  shall  certainly  find  the 
hen  that  will  lay  your  golden  eggs!" 
Outside,  I  still  could  hardly  pull  myself 
together — one  egg  as  a  precious  gift  to  a 
dignified  old  gentleman-engineer!  Could 


200  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

it  be  possible  ?  "But,"  explained  Made- 
moiselle, "if  I  had  not  given  him  that 
egg,  he  would  not  have  any  egg !"  Eggs 
were  costing  about  ten  cents  each.  "Of 
course,  we  never  even  discuss  meat,"  she 
added;  "but  he  has  been  quite  ill,  and  he 
must  have  an  egg  at  least  every  two  or 
three  days!" 

The  woman  we  visited  next  did  not 
have  a  comfortable  home,  but  a  single 
room.  She  had  been  for  many  years  a 
governess  in  a  family  in  Eastern  Bel- 
gium, but  just  before  the  war  both  she 
and  the  family  had  invested  their  money 
in  a  savings  concern  which  had  gone  to 
pieces,  and  from  that  day  she  had  been 
making  the  fight  to  keep  her  head  above 
water.  She  had  come  to  Brussels,  was 
succeeding  fairly  well,  when  she  was  taken 
ill.  She  had  had  an  operation,  but  after 
months  there  was  still  an  open  wound,  and 
she  could  drag  herself  about  only  with 
great  difficulty.  I  found  that  Mademoiselle 


THE  GREEN  BOX  201 

takes  her  to  the  hospital,  a  matter  of  hours, 
three  times  a  week  for  treatment,  and,  be- 
sides that,  visits  her  in  her  room.  As  we 
were  talking,  a  niece,  also  unfortunately 
without  funds,  came  in  to  polish  the  stove 
and  dust  a  bit.  Mademoiselle  reported 
that  she  was  pretty  sure  of  being  able  to 
bring  some  stockings  to  knit  on  her  next 
visit.  These  would  bring  five  cents  a 
pair.  And,  as  we  left,  she  gave  another 
egg,  and  this  time  a  tiny  package  of 
cocoa,  too.  I  discovered  that  every 
morsel  this  governess  has  to  eat  comes  to 
her  from  Mademoiselle.  And  yet  I  have 
never  been  in  a  room  where  there  was 
greater  courage  and  cheerfulness. 

So  it  was  as  we  went  from  square  to 
square.  In  some  homes  there  were  chil- 
dren with  no  father;  in  others,  grand- 
fathers with  neither  children  nor  grand- 
children; and  between  them,  people  well 
enough,  young  enough,  but  simply  ruined 
by  the  war.  Mademoiselle  was  going  back 


202  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

to  spend  the  night  with  an  old  lady  we 
had  visited  the  week  before,  and  had 
found  reading  Anatole  France.  She 
had  felt  she  must  make  her  last  testa- 
ment, and  looking  at  her  we  agreed. 
That  week  she  had  received  word  that 
her  only  son,  who  was  also  her  only  kin, 
had  been  killed  in  the  trenches  three 
months  before. 

Of  course,  every  city  has  its  hundreds 
of  unfortunates;  there  must  be  every- 
where some  form  of  "Assistance  Dis- 
crete," but  most  of  those  on  the  lists  of 
this  war-time  organization  would  in 
peace  time  be  the  ones  to  give,  rather 
than  receive,  and  their  number  is  increas- 
ing pitifully  as  month  follows  month. 

Every  one  permitted  to  be  in  Belgium 
for  any  length  of  time  marvels  at  the  in- 
credible, unbreakable  spirit  of  its  people. 
They  meet  every  new  order  of  the  mili- 
tary authorities  with  a  laugh;  when  they 
have  to  give  up  their  motor-cars,  they 


THE  GREEN  BOX  £03 

ride  on  bicycles ;  when  all  bicycle  tires  are 
requisitioned,  they  walk  cheerfully;  if  the 
city  is  fined  1,000,000  marks,  the  laconic 
comment  is :  "It  was  worth  it !"  All  the 
news  is  censored,  so  they  manufacture 
and  circulate  cheerful  news — nothing  ever 
breaks  through  their  smiling,  defiant 
solidarity.  One  thing  only  in  secret  I 
have  heard  them  admit,  and  that  is  the 
anguish  of  their  complete  separation  from 
their  loved  ones  at  the  front.  Mothers 
and  wives  of  every  other  nation  may  have 
messages ;  they,  never. 

The  thing  that  has  bound  them  thus 
together  and  buoyed  them  up  is  just  this 
enveloping,  inter-penetrating  atmosphere 
of  mutual  aid,  so  beautifully  exprest 
every  day  through  the  work  of  the  "As- 
sistance Discrete."  It  was  this  vision  of 
Fraternity  in  its  widest  sense  that  gave 
it  birth,  and  every  day  the  women  of 
Belgium  are  making  that  vision  a  blessed 
reality. 


XXIV 

THE  "MOTHER  OF  BELGIUM" 

MR.  HOOVER'S  visits  to  Brussels 
are    crowded    with    conferences, 
endless      complications      to      be 
straightened  out,  figures  and  reports  to 
be  accepted  or  rejected — with  all  the  un- 
imaginable difficulties  incident  to  the  re- 
lief of  an  occupied  territory. 

Responsible  on  the  one  hand  to  Eng- 
land, on  the  other  to  Germany,  de- 
pendent always  on  the  continued  active 
support  of  his  own  countrymen  and  on 
the  efficiency  and  integrity  of  the  local 
relief  organization,  he  fights  his  way 
literally  inch  by  inch  and  hour  by  hour 
to  bring  in  bread  for  the  Belgian  mother 
and  her  child. 

204 


"THE  MOTHER  OF  BELGIUM"  205 

It  is  easy  to  conceive  of  such  service  if 
the  giver  is  in  close  touch  with  the  mother 
and  her  need,  but  when  he  must  be  cut 
off  from  her — locked  up  with  the  grind, 
the  disillusionment,  the  staggering  obsta- 
cles, this  unbroken  devotion  through  the 
days  and  nights  of  more  than  two  years, 
becomes  one  of  the  finest  expressions  of 
altruism  the  world  has  seen. 

The  two  years  have  left  their  mark — to 
strangers  he  must  seem  silent,  grim,  but; 
every  C.  R.  B.  man  knows  what  this 
covers. 

On  one  visit  I  persuaded  him  to  take 
an  hour  from  the  bureau  to  go  with  me 
to  one  of  the  cantines  for  sub-normal 
children.  He  stood  silently  as  the  1,600 
little  boys  and  girls  came  crowding  in, 
slipping  in  their  places  at  the  long,  nar- 
row tables  that  cut  across  the  great  din- 
ing-rooms, and,  when  I  looked  up  at  him, 
his  eyes  had  filled  with  tears.  He  watched 
Madame  and  her  husband,  a  physician, 


206  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

going  from  one  child  to  another,  examin- 
ing their  throats,  or  their  eyes,  taking 
them  out  to  the  little  clinic  for  weighing, 
carrying  the  youngest  in  their  arms, 
while  the  dozen  white-uniformed  young 
women  hurrying  up  and  down  the  long 
rows  were  ladling  the  potato-stew  and 
the  rice  dessert. 

Then  suddenly  a  black-shawled  woman, 
evidently  in  deep  distress,  rushed  up  the 
stairs,  and  by  us  to  Madame,  to  pour  out 
her  trouble.  She  was  crying — she  had 
run  to  the  cantine,  as  a  child  to  its 
mother,  for  comfort  Her  little  eight- 
year-old  Marie,  who  had,  only  a  week 
ago,  been  chosen  as  the  loveliest  child  of 
the  1, 600  to  present  the  bouquet  to  the 
Minister's  wife,  and  who,  this  very  morn- 
ing, had  seemed  well  and  happy,  was 
lying  at  home  dead  of  convulsions.  The 
cantine  had  been  the  second  home  of  her 
precious  one  for  over  two  years — where, 
but  there,  should  she  flee  in  her  sorrow? 


"THE  MOTHER  OF  BELGIUM"  207 

I  turned  toward  Mr.  Hoover,  and  he 
spoke  these  true  words:  "The  women  of 
Belgium  have  become  the  Mother  of 
Belgium.  In  this  room  is  the  Relief  of 
Belgium!" 


XXV 

"OUT" 

THE  Rotterdam  canals  were  choked 
with  barges,  weighted  with  freight  ; 
heavy  trucks  rattled  down  the 
streets,  a  whistle  shrieked,  telegraph  wires 
hummed,  motors  flashed  by — men  were 
moving  quickly,  grouping  themselves 
freely  at  corners;  life — vivid,  outspoken, 
free — crowded  upon  me,  filling  my  eyes 
and  ears.  With  a  swift  tremor  of  physical 
fear  I  huddled  back  in  my  seat.  After 
eight  months  I  was  afraid  of  this  thing! 
And  "Inside"  I  had  thought  I  realized 
the  whole  of  the  cruel  numbness.  Slowly 
I  had  felt  it  closing  in  about  me,  closing 
down  upon  me,  shutting  me  in  with  them 
— with  terrors  and  anguish,  with  human 
souls  that  at  any  moment  a  hand  might 
reach  in  to  toss — where? 

208 


XXVI 

FAREWELL 

1CAN  think  of  no  more  beautiful,  final 
tribute  to  the  women  of  Belgium  than 
that  carried  in  their  own  words — 
words  of  tragedy,  but  words  of  widest 
vision  and  understanding  and  generosity, 
sent  in  farewell  to  us: 

"Oh,  you  who  are  going  back  in  that 
free  country  of  the  United  States,  tell  to 
all  our  sufferings,  our  distress;  tell  them 
again  and  again  our  cries  of  alarm,  which 
come  from  our  opprest  and  agonized 
hearts!  You  have  lived  and  felt  what 
we  are  living  and  feeling;  we  have  un- 
derstood that,  higher  than  charity  which 
gives,  you  brought  us  charity  which  un- 
derstands and  consoles!  Your  souls  have 
bowed  down  over  ours,  our  eyes  with 

209 


210  WOMEN  OF  BELGIUM 

anxiety  are  looking  in  your  friendly  eyes. 
Over  the  big  ocean  our  wishes  follow  you. 
Oh,  might  you  there  remember  the  little 
Belgium!  The  life  which  palpitates  in 
her  grateful  heart — she  owes  it  to  you! 
You  are  our  hope,  our  anchor!  Help  us! 
Do  not  abandon  the  work  of  charity  you 
have  undertaken! 

"Our  endless  gratitude  goes  to  you, 
and  from  father  to  children,  in  the  hovel 
and  in  the  palace,  we  shall  repeat  your 
great  heart,  your  high  idealism,  your 
touching  charity!" 


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